COMING TO SEMINARY: Called “America’s favorite poet” by The Wall Street Journal, Billy Collins will be reading from his work and conversing with Princeton Seminary President M. Craig Barnes at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 2, in the Iain R Torrance Atrium, Princeton Theological Seminary Library.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins will appear at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 2, in the Iain R Torrance Atrium, Princeton Theological Seminary Library, 25 Library Place in Princeton. He will read from his new book of poems and engage in a conversation with Princeton Seminary President M. Craig Barnes about the nature of poetry, the task of writing, and connections between poetry and faith. 

Admission is free and the event is open to the public. Parking is available in the lot behind the library.

Called “America’s favorite poet” by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Collins has just come out with The Rain in Portugal (Random House), which Booklist finds “disarmingly playful and wistfully candid.” His 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 Library “Literary Lion.” His other books include Questions About Angels (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), The Art of Drowning (University Pittsburgh Press, 1995), Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems (Random House, 2002), Nine Horses (Random House, 2003), The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems (Random House, 2007), Ballistics (Random House, 2010), Horoscopes for the Dead (Random House, 2012), as well as a collection of his haiku, She Was Just Seventeen (Modern Haiku
Press, 2006).

In June 2001, Mr. 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 distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

M. Craig Barnes is the seventh president of Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts In the Ministerial Life (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), which explores poetry as a metaphor for pastoral ministry.

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