Billy Collins

Billy Collins served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, in 2001 to 2003, and then as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. He is the author of several collections of poetry. He has won the Mark Twain Awad for Humor in Poetry, the Norman Mailer Prize for Poetry, the Levinson Prize, and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize and been named Poetry magazine's Poet of the Year and a New York Public Library Literary Lion, among many other awards and honors. He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the senior distinguished fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida.