SLCL Presents an Evening with Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins

St. Louis County Library is pleased to host a special ticketed event with two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and bestselling author Billy Collins. Collins will share his new poetry collection, “Musical Tables.”

The event will take place on Thursday, December 8 at 7:00 p.m. at the JCC of St. Louis’s Staenberg Family Complex – Edison Gymnasium, 2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis, MO 63146.

The event is presented by St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Favorite Author Series and the SLCL Authors @ the J event series. Book sales are provided by The Novel Neighbor.

Billy Collins will be in conversation with Aliki Barnstone, Poet Laureate of Missouri 2016-2019.

TICKET INFORMATION: Tickets go on sale November 1 and can be purchased through Eventbrite.

INDIVIDUAL TICKET $32 (Admits ONE and includes one copy of “Musical Tables”)

PACKAGE TICKET $38 (Admits TWO and includes one copy of “Musical Tables”)

A socially distanced book signing will follow the author presentation.

Former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author of “Aimless Love,” Billy Collins shares a collection of more than 125 small poems, all of them new, and each a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essence.

You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He “puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity,” says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”

Now “America’s favorite poet” (The Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic style: the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love—all in a handful of lines. Neither haiku nor limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry’s famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning. Written with Collins’s recognizable wit and wisdom, the poems of “Musical Tables” show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his exceptional career.

Billy Collins is the author of 12 collections of poetry. Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.