Nation’s poet laureate to speak at Memorial Union

Billy Collins, the nation’s poet laureate, will speak at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 22, at the Memorial Union Theater. The talk, sponsored by the UW–Madison Libraries, is one of the major opening events in the second annual Wisconsin Book Festival, held in Madison Oct. 22-26.

Collins was named the United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 in June 2001. He will present a poetry reading followed by audience questions and a book signing.

He is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently “Nine Horses,” “Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems” and “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.” These last three collections have broken sales records for poetry. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The American Scholar and Paris Review.

He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Collins is “a charming public reader, who can pack auditoriums,” according to the New York Times.

The Wisconsin Book Festival in its first year drew more than 8,000 people to Madison for the five-day event. This year, presenters include Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Deborah Blum; Madison native and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Maraniss; poet, essayist and feminist Grace Paley; and Piri Thomas, a poet considered to be the founder of spoken-word poetry.

The Friends of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, which is also among the major sponsors of the Wisconsin Book Festival, is helping coordinate the Collins lecture.