Interview Transcript
Question: What inspires you?
Billy Collins: Well it sounds very circular, but what inspires my poetry is other poetry. No one’s smart enough to go into a room and just invent literature or poetry. The reason you write poetry is that you’ve heard poetry. The reason you play the saxophone is that you’ve heard the saxophone. And that’s what produces my poetry – the poetry of the past and the poetry of the present I read today. There’s really no external . . . I mean there’s a kind of egotism that’s involved. It’s clearly the most egotistical kind of writing imaginable where the “I” – the capital “I” – is completely fore grounded. This starts around the time of Wordsworth where he said, “I wandered lonely as a cloud.”
I mean it’s quite presumptuous to think anyone would be interested in the fact that you wandered and that it was like a cloud . . . that your wandering was cloud-like. So there’s that. The ego likes to get on the branch and sing. You know, it likes to get up there and show its feathers and sing. And there’s that kind of demonstration of the self. But basically the other . . . the main writing inspiration is just other . . . other poetry, other poems.
July 4, 2007
What inspires you?
Poet; Former U.S. Poet Laureate
Poetry begets poetry begets poetry.
November 11, 2007 | In Inspiration & Wisdom
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Jenny McCann on August 19, 2008, 10:13 AM
As long as abstinence is taught as the only means to not get infected with HIV, HIV infection rates will increase. FACT. We live in a sexually aware society, you only have to switch on the TV and be bombarded with sex. But fundamentally we are human beings, and sex is a natural urge, no matter what the moral league say. Not teaching young people about condom use is immoral. Not equipping them with the information on how to protect themselves is fundamentally criminal. Not giving AIDs money to foreign NGOs who don%u2019t just teach abstinence is unspeakably inhumane. People have sex, no matter where in the world they live. People just need to have safer sex.
I live and work for an NGO in India. It is sexually repressed society. On paper no one has sex before marriage. IN reality, all classes of people are having %u201Cillicit sex%u201D %u2013 whether with sex workers, partners, husbands or wives. A large majority have no idea that they are at risk from any STDs. In Maharashtra alone, many schools have banned sex education. Parents don%u2019t believe their children need to know about sex education. People think only poor people can get HIV. Only immoral people get HIV. People think that they are not a risk.
People don%u2019t get tested, therefore see doctors (who in a large majority of cases haven%u2019t had the relevant training) when they are at Stage 3-4 and are told they will die. Therefore everyone thinks you die when you HIV . There is no distinction between HIV and AIDS in a large majority of the press. The press continually sounds the death knell for HIV people. It%u2019s a vicious, uninformed cycle that is made worse by the stigma associated with the condition. The first hand stories I have heard, the stories of the treatment of infected by their own families, fuelled by ignorance and discrimination, are distressing. This is a very grim picture. There are amazing brilliant shining lights in the fight in India. Stories of hope. But unfortunately the distressing stories outweigh the good. Coupled with endemic corruption and very little public health care, the battle only gets harder.
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