About Billy Collins
Billy Collins, whose full name is William James Collins, is an American poet. He served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. He taught as a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York until his retirement in 2016. In 1992 he was named a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, and from 2004 to 2006 he was the New York State Poet. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020 he teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
![“When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don't have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.” quote by Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/283/billy-collins-3004_happens_when-you-get-a-poem-in-a-public-place-it_2255549.png)
