March 18, 2008                                                                                                                                                   Associate Director of Marketing

                                                                                                                                                                               Phone: 253.573.2360

                                                                                                                                                                               Email: laceyl@broadwaycenter.org

In Celebration of National Poetry Month

Broadway Center presents Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins

Media Sponsored by Puget Sound Public Radio KUOW

Tacoma, WA – In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Broadway Center presents an American phenomenon and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 7:30pm in the  Pantages Theater.

No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular 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 have broken 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 eight collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Picnic, Lightning, Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems, Nine Horses, and The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems. A collection of his haiku, titled She Was Just Seventeen, was published by Modern Haiku Press in fall 2006. He also edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006. His next poetry collection is tentatively titled Ballistics and will be published in 2008.

Included among the honors Billy 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 humorous poetry.

In June 2001, Billy Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003. In January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate 2004-06. Billy Collins is a professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

Kings Books will be selling Billy Collins’ recent collection The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems before and after the performance.  After the show, Billy Collins will be signing books in the lobby.

Tickets are on sale now for $24, $34 and $46. Tickets may be purchased at the Broadway Center Box Office located on 9th & Broadway or by calling the Box Office at 253.591.5894. To purchase online at any time or for information about upcoming events visit www.broadwaycenter.org.

The Broadway Center for the Performing Arts gratefully acknowledges the following for support of the 2007-2008 Season: ArtsFund, Ben B. Cheney Foundation, The Boeing Company, City of Tacoma, Forest Foundation, The News Tribune, Pierce County Arts Commission, Sequoia Foundation Pierce County Program, and Washington State Arts Commission.

###