A poet for the people
AFT member Billy Collins named poet laureate

People who don’t usually like poetry love Billy Collins’ poems. What’s not to love about one dealing with the neighbors’ constantly barking dog titled, "Another reason why I don’t keep a gun in the house"? Or "Introduction to Poetry," which ends with the line, "They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means." And you can’t help but want to read "Shoveling Snow with Buddha."

Collins’ work is accessible, concrete and funny but still full of substance--a far cry from what many of us remember slogging through in our school days. A member of the AFT-affiliated Professional Staff Congress and distinguished professor of English at the City University of New York’s Lehman College, last month Collins assumed his duties as the 11th poet laureate consultant in poetry of the Library of Congress. As James Billington, who is the librarian of Congress, said in announcing Collins’ appointment: "He writes in an original way about all manner of ordinary things and situations with both humor and a surprising contemplative twist."

When Collins got a message that the Library of Congress had called, he figured it might be an invitation to read some of his work in Washington, D.C. The news that he had been selected as the nation’s honorary leading poet came as a shock, or as he told the New York Times, it was "like a soft wrecking ball from outer space."

Collins admits that his selection is something of a "wild card choice" for a poet, as he puts it, removed "from the epicenter of the poetry world." A lifelong New Yorker and 30-year veteran faculty member at Lehman, Collins says he has never met any of the previous laureates and doesn’t attend the usual conferences and workshops on the established poets’ circuit.

But Collins’ six books boast sales that rank him as among the top-selling--perhaps best-selling--poets in the country. His new book from publishing giant Random House, a "greatest hits" collection entitled Sailing Alone Around the Room, should solidify that standing.

As poet laureate, Collins plans to focus on promoting poetry in high schools. Named for the typical number of days in a school year, his Poetry 180 initiative has a simple aim: to get high school students to listen to one poem a day. The most likely vehicle would be the daily announcements over the public address system. He currently is selecting 180 poems, mostly contemporary works--with some of his own slipped in, of course--that he believes high school students can understand and relate to. The idea is "to keep it out of the classroom," Collins explains. "In other words, [the poem] would not be discussed or analyzed, and it wouldn’t be on the mid-term. The students would just need to listen to it. It’s an effort to see poetry not as something taught in English class, but as a feature of daily life."

In a similar vein, when Collins spoke last year at Lehman’s convocation, he shared his "fantasy commencement," in which "every graduate of the college would come up to the stage and recite a handful of lines of poetry before receiving a diploma."

More about Collins, including many of his poems, is available online at http://www.bigsnap.com/. For more on Poetry 180, check the Library of Congress site at www.loc.gov.

Lively album features labor and protest songs

After a full day of work as a librarian at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City, Judy Wood often would prefer to stay home instead of heading out to her weekly Monday night chorus rehearsal. "But I go anyway," she says, "and when I come home, I’m happy. I come home singing."

This isn’t just any old chorus Wood performs with. It’s the New York City Labor Chorus, a group composed of AFT members like herself and others from about two dozen unions citywide. The group, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, has performed at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations, marched in the city’s annual Labor Day parade, appeared at picket lines and demonstrations, and has performed at AFT meetings. Wood helped arrange a performance at last year’s New York State United Teachers representative assembly, for example. "It was great," she said. "They really loved us."

A vice president with the AFT-affiliated United College Employees at FIT, Wood got involved with the chorus after attending a number of concerts at the invitation of a friend, who is one of the group’s founders. "I enjoyed [the concerts] and thought, ‘This is for me.’" The chorus recently released its fourth CD, a lively 20-song collection called "Workers Rise: Labor in the Spotlight." The album includes traditional union and protest songs as well as pieces reflecting gospel, jazz, classical and folk traditions. One piece, "Ode to Workers," is an original adaptation of Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy." Another, "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" is based on Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty. The CD is dedicated to Percy McRae, a retired letter carrier and soloist on their version of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?", who died suddenly last July after singing the national anthem at a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

The chorus aims to spread labor music to a wider audience, Wood says. "A lot of people don’t know the songs, and they don’t know the history," she notes. "Labor history isn’t taught and it isn’t known, and that’s a shame." Wood hopes that teachers might listen to the songs and pick up something to use in their own classrooms. "Music is a great way to reach people."

More information about the chorus and its CDs is available at www.nyclc.org/ or by calling 212/595-6600 or 212/331-0942.