Two poets are featured at Writers at Masters: Billy Collins and Eamon Grennan — and both are definitely worth devoting an evening to. The program is presented by the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center with support from The Masters School and Rivertowns Arts Council. It is held at Masters (Claudia Boettcher Theatre) at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 11th .

The HVWC describes the event as a ” special reading and Q & A with two remarkable and charismatic poets.”

Billy Collins is the author of six books of poetry including The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Picnic, Lightning, Sailing Alone Around the Room and Questions About Angels, which was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series. Collins’ poetry has appeared in a variety of periodicals and in several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the editor of Poetry 180 and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.� He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College. Billy Collins served as the United States Poet Laureate for 2001-2003 and in January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate 2004-06.

Eamon Grennan is from Dublin, Ireland, and has lived in the United States for many years. He is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including The Quick of It, Relations: New & Selected Poems and Still Life with Waterfall, which was awarded the 2003 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His collection of translations, Leopardi: Selected Poems, won the 1997 PEN Translation Award for Poetry. A collection of his critical essays, Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century, was published in 1999. Grennan has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and he has taught at numerous universities, including New York University, Columbia University, and Villanova University. He is the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, and divides his time between the U.S. and the west of Ireland.

Admission is $15, payable at the door ($10 for members of HVWC and Rivertowns Arts Council). Books will be available for purchase and autographing at a reception afterwards.

Billy Collins photo by Jersey Walz
Eamon Grennan photo by Neal Greig