EPHRIAM - Billy Collins, former United States Poet laureate, is speaking at Snow College on February 10 at 7 p.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Collins, who served as the National Poet Laureate from2001-2003, is a New York native and also served as the New York state Poet Laureate.

Collins has been a professor at Leham University, in New York City, for more than thirty years and is a renowned speaker.

One of his greatest privileges was to stand before a special session of Congress in September of 2002 and read his poem The Names in memory of those lost on September 11, 2001.

Collins introduced a program called Poetry 180 while the National Laureate. The program includes a book and website containing 180 poems. The aim is to get high school students to read a poem a day for every school day.

The speaking event will be held in the Eccles Center and is free and open to the public.

 

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

CANCELLED

Billy Collins will speak at Convocation Thursday Feb. 10th at 12:30, and that night at 7:00 as the Tanner Lecturer.  Both events are free and open to the public.