Poet Billy Collins Describes His Childhood and Shares Two Unpublished Poems The former U.S. Poet Laureate grew up in Queens, N.Y.; why he still has a money clip and his father’s union pin

Billy Collins at his home in Winter Park, Fla. PHOTO: EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Oct. 17, 2017 11:00 a.m. ET

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Billy Collins, 76, was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 and is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including his latest, “The Rain in Portugal” (Random House), now in paperback. He spoke with Marc Myers.

I wrote my first poem in the early 1950s when I was 10. I was in the back seat of my parents’ car as my father drove up New York’s FDR Drive. I saw a large sailboat on the East River and asked my mother for a pen. I wanted to write down how I felt.

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it probably was about the incongruity of a bright white boat sailing around in the gray city.

My parents were both 40 when they had me in 1941. I was a miracle baby, since they didn’t expect to have a child. But I never viewed my parents as old. They always looked and acted much younger than their age.

I grew up in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, N.Y., until I was 13. We lived in several buildings, but the one I remember best was on 78th Street and 34th Avenue. The building took up an entire block and had beautiful garden apartments.

Mr. Collins at the Douglaston Golf Course in Queens, N.Y., at about age 3. PHOTO: BILLY COLLINS/EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

We lived on the top floor of the five-story building, in a two-bedroom apartment. I was an only child and liked to spend time in our sun room. The room was bright all day. I’d look out the window watching for experiences that would trigger a poem.

In my room, I kept lots of lead soldiers made in England that my father had given me. I also had plastic model cars and trucks. I liked to burn them and watch the black smoke rise with particles hanging in the air and see the plastic melt and reform.

My father, Bill, was a Runyonesque character. Before I was born, he traveled the country working as an electrician and then landed a job at the New York Daily News. He met my mother in the hospital after he was injured at work. She was his nurse.

After I was born, my mother’s brother in Montreal got my father a job in New York at his insurance company. At first, my father worked there alone. He was a very good-looking guy and something of a dandy. He was athletic and always looked sharp.

He used to call me Champ, which was probably good for my self-esteem. He’d say, “Champ, always carry your cash in a money clip so you can get it out fast and pay for drinks.”

His philosophy was to be a sport and pay for your friends as much as possible. To this day, I still carry my cash in a Tiffany money clip.

‘Champ, always carry your cash in a money clip so you can get it out fast and pay for drinks.’

—Billy Collins, quoting his father

My mother, Katherine, was called Kay. She was born and raised on a farm in Ontario and attended nursing school in Toronto. Then in the late 1920s, she traveled around the States. She was great looking.

My father worked hard and eventually transitioned from life insurance to aviation insurance. By then, his office on John Street in Manhattan had become a real office.

The company’s British chairman and his wife enjoyed poetry and contributed to the Modern Poetry Association in Chicago. As a result, Poetry magazine arrived in my father’s office, and he’d bring home the latest issue each month.

In school, I had been exposed to traditional poets—they all had three names. The new poets in Poetry were people like Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Maxine Kumin and Denise Levertov. They wrote in a fresh, conversational style.

Unpublished poems by Billy Collins

In 1954, when I was 13, we moved to White Plains, N.Y. I lost all my friends, but I gained a Cape Cod house with a basketball court on the driveway and cars.

In college and grad school, I wanted to be an English professor. Poetry was something I wrote on the side. My first book of poetry, “The Apple That Astonished Paris,” was published in 1988, when I was in my 40s. From then on, poetry became my focus.

Today, I shuttle between homes in New York and Winter Park, Fla., where I direct a speakers series at Rollins College. In Florida, my fiancée and I live in a one-story, Key West-style home with white hurricane shutters and a little pool in back. There’s no lawn, just tropical foliage.

Inside, we have three bedrooms and a big long room with a piano and books. The sun never really screams through the windows. At 4 p.m. it comes in obliquely through the shutters, making my office look like Marlon Brando’s in “The Godfather.”

The most prized item I have that belonged to my father arrived in a package some years after he died in 1995. It was a pin from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers recognizing 75 years of membership and service. Despite his insurance-company success, my father had been paying his union dues.

I keep the pin in a cuff-link box. Seeing the pin brings back memories of him. Paying those dues was something he kept to himself. Now it’s our secret.