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More about Billy Collins
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, 2001-2003

Billy CollinsBilly Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003.

On June 21, 2001, Billy Collins was appointed as the Library's new Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. In 2002, he was appointed to a second term, continuing through 2003.

He is Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 40 years. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida, an MFA faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook as of 2015, and served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.

Billy Collins' books of poetry include:

  • Aimless Love (2013)
  • Horoscopes for the Dead (2011)
  • Ballistics (2008)
  • The Trouble with Poetry (2005)
  • Nine Horses: Poems (2002)
  • Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001)
  • Picnic, Lightning (1998)
  • The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist
  • Questions About Angels (1991), a National Poetry Series selection by Edward Hirsch
  • The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)
  • Video Poems (1980)
  • Pokerface (1977)

Other awards and honors include:

  • the Oscar Blumenthal Prize
  • the Bess Hokin Prize
  • the Frederick Bock Prize
  • the Levinson Prize
  • New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship
  • National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
  • Guggenheim Foundation fellowship