Poet Billy Collins took a break from work on his newest collection of poems to visit N.C. State, read poems and answer questions from an audience in Talley Student Center.

Collins, who resides in New York City, read a number of poems, including a few haiku that he said he comes up with while walking his dog most mornings.

Members of the audience said they were pleasantly surprised with Collins’ humor.

“He was really pretty funny,” Andy Smith, a sophomore in aerospace engineering, said.

“I was going in there thinking it was a poetry recital that I was just doing for Scholars, but he was really interesting.”

During a question-and-answer session at the end of the event, an audience member asked where Collins derived his sense of humor.

“My father was a sadistic practical joker,” Collins said. “At first I didn’t know you could allow humor into poetry — I used to write tormented ‘she doesn’t love me,’ eighth grade stuff.”

Collins broke up his longer poetry with a series of haiku — 17-syllable poems that Collins said could cover any topic.

“I like haikus because it’s a form that is resistant to change — it’s an eternal, unchanging thing,” Collins said. “I like the tension between one’s desires for the poem and a haiku’s inherent form.”

Speaking about his inspirations, Collins said he gets it from all kinds of poetry because jealousy is the strongest emotion for a writer.

“Writers are driven by jealousy,” he said. “That’s why I tell beginning writers to read as much as they can to find a way to say something in a new way. You have to find poets that make you jealous.”

Michael Crisci, a sophomore in English, said he read quite a bit of Collins’ work before coming to the reading.

“He was very casual and personable,” Crisci said. “Him reading his poetry really helped understanding because you could infer things from his voice.”

Philip Boyne, a sophomore in physics, joined his friend Crisci at the event and said he very much enjoyed Collins the perspective he brought to his work.

“He did a great job combining intensely meaningful poems, but put a humorous tone to it,” Boyne said. “The cadence he put on it naturally made the poetry more powerful.”