CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Oddly, becoming poet laureate of the United States is not a democratic process.

Poet Billy Collins explained, "There is no election, no committee. There is no run-up. There is no application, no discussion. It is a completely autocratic decision made by one person."

The one person is the librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. He decides.

"Basically, it's a phone call from one person," Collins said.

Collins, who speaks Nov. 16 at Fairmont State University, served two terms as the country's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He held the post from 2001 to 2003.

It's a government job, but a nice one. The poet laureate is an employee of the Library of Congress. The job comes with a modest salary and an office overtop the Jefferson Library. It's a suite of rooms, decorated with period furniture and the photographs of the previous laureates peering down.

"Peering down with disbelief," Collins added. "Some of them sneering -- or at least, that's the way I took their expressions."

These photographs would include Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Rita Dove and now Charles Simic.

Collins has been referred to as the most popular poet in America and lauded (and decried) as one of the most accessible, but even people not particularly interested in poetry might have heard of him. He's a frequent guest on National Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," where he reads poems and appears in radio drama skits with the show's host, Garrison Keillor.

He became part of the show through Keillor's other program, "The Writer's Almanac," which is heard just after noon weekdays on West Virginia Public Radio. As part of the five-minute broadcast, Keillor reads a short poem.

"At some point, he'd featured four or five of my poems," Collins said. "I think that was part of the thing that led him to inviting me on."

The first time he appeared, Collins just stuck to reading his poems, but the radio host and the poet hit it off. They had an easy banter onstage. Keillor started bringing him on for skits.

"He's always killing me," Collins said and laughed. "I think there's some latent hostility there -- we both put out anthologies of poetry the same year."

As poet laureate, Collins instituted the program Poetry 180 for high schools, which provided a poem a day for the school year, as a way to introduce students to poetry. The program became a book, "Poetry 180: A Turning Back To Poetry," one of several books Collins has written during his career.

"I put it together as a way back to poetry for people who've lost touch with it," he said. "It's a way to catch up."

Collins doesn't believe poetry adds to the range of human experience or thought. Poems can be reduced to four or five statements. It's about using metaphor to find a new way to express those statements.

"I'm not writing down my emotions, but being human," he said. "I have pretty much the same fears and anxieties and desires and yearnings and joys and misapprehensions as anyone else. Add to it, some curse where you want to express it in a fresh way, for some reason."

The life of a professional poet and former poet laureate is very busy. Collins travels all over the country to places large and small to read and to talk about poetry. By his recollection, he's performed in 46 of the 50 states. After his visit to Fairmont, he has only the Dakotas and Montana left to tread.

"This whole craze of literary readings probably means that at any give moment there are probably 50 to 70 American authors up in the air, vectoring off to various podiums."

He jokes that if they were to all crash into each other, say over Kansas, it wouldn't be so terrible.

Want to go?

Billy Collins

WHERE: Turly Center Ballroom, Fairmont State University

WHEN: Nov. 16, 7 p.m.

TICKETS: Free admission

INFO: www.fairmontstate.edu

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Oddly, becoming poet laureate of the United States is not a democratic process.

Poet Billy Collins explained, "There is no election, no committee. There is no run-up. There is no application, no discussion. It is a completely autocratic decision made by one person."

The one person is the librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. He decides.

"Basically, it's a phone call from one person," Collins said.

Collins, who speaks Nov. 16 at Fairmont State University, served two terms as the country's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He held the post from 2001 to 2003.

It's a government job, but a nice one. The poet laureate is an employee of the Library of Congress. The job comes with a modest salary and an office overtop the Jefferson Library. It's a suite of rooms, decorated with period furniture and the photographs of the previous laureates peering down.

"Peering down with disbelief," Collins added. "Some of them sneering -- or at least, that's the way I took their expressions."

These photographs would include Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Rita Dove and now Charles Simic.

Collins has been referred to as the most popular poet in America and lauded (and decried) as one of the most accessible, but even people not particularly interested in poetry might have heard of him. He's a frequent guest on National Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," where he reads poems and appears in radio drama skits with the show's host, Garrison Keillor.

He became part of the show through Keillor's other program, "The Writer's Almanac," which is heard just after noon weekdays on West Virginia Public Radio. As part of the five-minute broadcast, Keillor reads a short poem.

"At some point, he'd featured four or five of my poems," Collins said. "I think that was part of the thing that led him to inviting me on."

The first time he appeared, Collins just stuck to reading his poems, but the radio host and the poet hit it off. They had an easy banter onstage. Keillor started bringing him on for skits.

"He's always killing me," Collins said and laughed. "I think there's some latent hostility there -- we both put out anthologies of poetry the same year."

As poet laureate, Collins instituted the program Poetry 180 for high schools, which provided a poem a day for the school year, as a way to introduce students to poetry. The program became a book, "Poetry 180: A Turning Back To Poetry," one of several books Collins has written during his career.

"I put it together as a way back to poetry for people who've lost touch with it," he said. "It's a way to catch up."

Collins doesn't believe poetry adds to the range of human experience or thought. Poems can be reduced to four or five statements. It's about using metaphor to find a new way to express those statements.

"I'm not writing down my emotions, but being human," he said. "I have pretty much the same fears and anxieties and desires and yearnings and joys and misapprehensions as anyone else. Add to it, some curse where you want to express it in a fresh way, for some reason."

The life of a professional poet and former poet laureate is very busy. Collins travels all over the country to places large and small to read and to talk about poetry. By his recollection, he's performed in 46 of the 50 states. After his visit to Fairmont, he has only the Dakotas and Montana left to tread.

"This whole craze of literary readings probably means that at any give moment there are probably 50 to 70 American authors up in the air, vectoring off to various podiums."

He jokes that if they were to all crash into each other, say over Kansas, it wouldn't be so terrible.

Want to go?

Billy Collins

WHERE: Turly Center Ballroom, Fairmont State University

WHEN: Nov. 16, 7 p.m.

TICKETS: Free admission

INFO: www.fairmontstate.edu

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5195.

Invention

By Billy Collins

Tonight the moon is a cracker,

with a bite out of it

floating in the night,

and in a week or so

according to the calendar

it will probably look

like a silver football,

and nine, maybe ten days ago

it reminded me of a thin bright claw.

But eventually --

by the end of the month,

I reckon --

it will waste away

to nothing,

and I will have a few nights

to myself,

a little time to rest my jittery pen.