Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins held a reading at Central Lakes College in Brainerd Minnesota as part of Verse Like Water, the visiting poet program of CLL, in conjunction with The Crossing Arts Alliance.
“Poetry is for everybody. It is not something that’s for specialists. It’s no just for academics or professors or any other group of intelligentsia. It’s a matter of finding the right poets for you. If you have a misconception about poetry, it’s because you don’t read it If people would start reading it the misconceptions would fall away. One of its powers is that it comes in a highly condensed form. If you read a novel, it can take you three, or four, or five days, or a couple of weeks. If you read a poem it can take you 25 or 45 seconds. Poems are powerful little packages, at least the good ones.” ~Billy Collins
The 2014 Verse Like Water is funded with grants from Five Wings Regional Art Board, and the Minnesota Legacy Fund. CLC will host former U.S. Laureate Robert Hass October 29 and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith November 21.
