Popular Poet Laureate visits MSUM

Popular Poet Laureate visits MSUM

Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series celebrates 25 years

“Luring his readers into the poem with humor, Mr. Collins leads them unwittingly into deeper, more serious places, a kind of journey from the familiar to quirky to unexpected territory, sometimes tender, often profound.”                        — The New York Times

Poet Billy Collins brings his award-winning poetry to the MSUM campus Thursday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. on the Gaede Stage in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts. Collins will read from his work, answer questions and sign books at a reception following the reading. The event, sponsored by the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.

The nation’s poet laureate from 2001-2003, Collins found success in poetry much the way Robert Frost did. Both received high critical acclaim while enjoying broad public appeal. 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.” His last three collections of poems broke sales records for poetry. His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience – enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio – includes people of all backgrounds and age groups.

Collins has published nine collections of poetry and a collection of haiku, edited two an­thologies of contemporary poetry, and served as the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006. He also edited Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, with paintings by David Allen Sibley.

Included among the honors 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. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry. He was also named New York State Poet Laureate in January 2004. Collins is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

The Collins’ reading celebrates the 25^th anniversary of the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series, established in 1985 by former MSUM President Roland Dille and English professors Thom Tammaro and Mark Vinz. Since then, the Series has brought to campus and to the community more than 150 featured writers. It has also sponsored readings by writers on the MSUM faculty upon publica­tion of their new books; writers from the immediate area or those passing through Moorhead promoting new books; the annual publication reading of the campus literary magazine, Red Weather; and writers visiting under the auspices of the Visiting Scholar’s Program, the Convocation Commit­tee, New Rivers Press, and the Glasrud Lecture Series.

For more information, contact Series Director Thom Tammaro at (218) 477-2199 or tammaro@mnstate.edu.

McGrath Program Fall ’10