Synopsis
'Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world' – Carol Ann Duffy
In Water, Water Billy Collins writes with joy and wonder about the beauties and ironies of everyday life. The best poems, he believes, begin in clarity and end with a hint of the sublime: A cat learns to drink from a swimming pool. An astronaut recites Emily Dickinson in space. Here is a writer devotedly in love with the world around him, fascinated by its pleasures but generously sensitive of its pains.
Ever a laureate of the oblique, Collins is especially sensitive to disappearances and acts of concealment, sketching objects by the outlines their absence leaves: ‘Everything in this hard place’, reflects one voice in ‘Crying in Class’, ‘is designed to disappear.’ From grief’s soft echoes, to the atheist equally afraid of heaven and hell, Collins remains as keenly vigilant of the light as he does the shadows which dance at its edges.
‘A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace’ – The New Yorker
'Among the best poems that Collins has ever written' – NPR
'Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give' – The Washington Post
Details
Reviews
“Billy Collins’ medium is a rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence. I’d follow this man’s mind anywhere. Expect to be surprised”Michael Donaghy, Forward Prize-winning author of Conjure
“Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world”Carol Ann Duffy, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
“Smart, his strings tuned and resonant, his wonderful eye looping over the things, events and ideas of the world, rueful, playful, warm voiced, easy to love”Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
“Funny but serious, accessible but rich in meaning, consistently surprising – the world looks slightly different after reading a Billy Collins poem. He’s a one-off, an American treasure”Nick Laird, author of Up Late
