(Illustration by João Fazenda/The New Yorker)

From The New Yorker:

A New York Poet Laureate in Deepest, Darkest Florida

When Billy Collins tells his New York City friends that he moved to Winter Park, Florida, they give him looks. “Florida has a very strong stigma right now,” Collins, a former Poet Laureate of both the U.S. and New York State, said the other day. “Ron DeSantis has reached a new level of trespass and overstepping.” He went on, “But I don’t wake up in the morning and think about the governor and what college boards he’s changing or what books he’s banning.”

It was the kind of warm afternoon that makes winter-weary New Yorkers jealous. Collins, a Queens native, was in the driveway of his banana-pudding-yellow house. He strolled onto a brick street leading down to a lake.

“I wanted to live in America, and Florida is America,” he said. He misses the Grand Central Oyster Bar (he lived in Westchester for years) and being able to attend as many readings and jazz concerts as he used to. But he appreciates feeling liberated from the constant tug of cultural obligations.

“I’m in Florida but not of Florida,” he likes to say of the state where “woke goes to die.”

Billy Collins was dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in The New York Times. He served two terms as the U.S. poet laureate and was New York State poet laureate. He will be appearing at the 2024 Festival.