Past U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins to speak for WCCC author series

WASHINGTON, NJ -- The Warren County Community College Visiting Authors Series continues Dec. 5 with a reading by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed poets in this country for years.

The reading, beginning at 6 p.m. in room E206, is free and open to the public and will be followed by a question-and-answer period and book signing.

In 2004, Collins was named New York State Poet Laureate and in 2001 he was appointed United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003). His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry, including his most recent book, Water, Water: Poems, released in November by Penguin Random House.

His other collections of poetry include Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, Ballistics, Horoscopes for the Dead, and Picnic, Lightning.

His books Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems 2003 – 2013, The Rain in Portugal, Whale Day And Other Poems, and Musical Tables were New York Times bestsellers.

Collins’ work has appeared in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar. He is a Guggenheim fellow and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion”

He also has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry.

In addition, he has edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day.

He is a former distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. In 2016, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Frenchtown Bookshop will be on site for the reading, selling Collins’ books.

The Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Division of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a partner agency of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. All physical site facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. Sign language interpretation for any VAS event is available with two weeks’ notice. Any questions about the event should be directed to Professor BJ Ward, who has directed the Visiting Authors Series for the last 25 years: ward@warren.edu .

Warren Community College, located at 475 Route 57 West in Washington, NJ, offers creative writing workshops and literature courses. To find out more about WCCC’s course offerings, or for directions to the Washington campus, please visit www.warren.edu