Poet Laureate to Speak at Ohio Dominican
July 24, 2003
Ohio Dominican University is proud to present U.S. 2003 Poet Laureate Billy Collins as part of its Presidential Lecture Series.
Collins will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 30 in The Little Theatre in Erskine Hall on ODU's main campus, 1216 Sunbury Road The event is free and open to the public, but requires tickets due to limited seating. A reception and book signing will follow Collins' presentation. Books will be on sale at the university book store. Free parking is available in the Visitors Lot off of Sunbury Road.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington appointed Collins as the 11th Poet Laureate in June 2001. Of the poet, Dr. Billington said, "Billy Collins' poetry is widely accessible. He writes in an original way about all manner of ordinary things and situations with both humor and a surprising contemplative twist."
Collins' new program, Poetry 180, promotes the reading of daily poems in high school classrooms across America. Accompanying the poem-a-day program is the book, Poetry 180, an anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by Collins. His program and anthology are designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem each day of the school year.
The Poet Laureate's own books of poetry include Picnic, Lightning (1998), The Art of Drowning (1995), Questions About Angels (1991) and The Apple that Astonished Paris (1988). In Fall 2002, Random House published Collins' newest collection of poems, Nine Horses. His honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is also the recipient of the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize - all awarded by Poetry magazine. Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years.
Collins is the third artist to be featured in Ohio Dominican's Presidential Lecture Series, following best selling author Frances Mayes and Pulitzer Prize award-winning playwright Tony Kushner. The Lecture Series grew out of the publicly acclaimed inaugural lectures by educational psychologist Howard Gardner, and playwright Edward Albee.
For more information and tickets, please contact 614.251.4610.. The event is supported by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
