An Evening with Billy Collins
Seamus Heaney HomePlace Bellaghy
45 Main Street Bellaghy
Bellaghy
Co. Londonderry
BT45 8HT
Featuring a reading and a conversation with Paula Meehan.
Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal.
Billy Collins has published twelve collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems, 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.
Included among the honours Billy Collins has received are 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. He has also received the Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, The Hall-Kenyon Prize, the Mailer Prize for Poetry, and the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry.
In June 2001, Billy Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003. In January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate 2004-06. 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.
We are honoured to welcome Billy to the Helicon to read from his work and to chat to poet Paula Meehan about his exemplary career.
Entrance Fee
£30
Disabled Access
