Poet Billy Collins to appear at Midwest Literary Walk
Billy Collins discusses how he got into poetry, what drives his work, and what he anticipates at the Midwest Literary Walk on April 23.
Courtesy of Wiki Commons
For anyone who has tried, writing poetry can be hard. It can be difficult to know if you are actually writing something that’s gripping — or if you’re even telling a coherent story. Billy Collins is one of the most popular poets in America, according to Bruce Weber at The New York Times. He will appear at the Midwest Literary Walk at 4 p.m. April 23 at the Washington Street Education Center Auditorium in Chelsea. The event is hosted by the Chelsea District Library.
“I learned to write poetry by reading it, and I think that’s the way you learn. Not by sitting at a seminar table, listening to a poet who’s well established, talking about his or her poetry, but by reading English poetry and getting used to the iambic measures in poetry,” — Billy Collins, former poet laureate and speaker at the Midwest Literary Walk.
Listen: How to write good poetry, according to an acclaimed poet.
Guest
Billy Collins is a former Guggenheim fellow, a professor emeritus at Lehman College, and was the United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003.
Collins’ last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry. His newest book is “Whale Day: And Other Poems.”
“I learned to write poetry by reading it, and I think that’s the way you learn. Not by sitting at a seminar table, listening to a poet who’s well established, talking about his or her poetry, but by reading English poetry and getting used to the iambic measures in poetry.”
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