Billy Collins is a National Poet Laureate, who has written hundreds of poems and is nationally recognized for his talents. But on Monday, he was pacing in a circle around 60 alphabetized poems that he was trying to put into his latest collection. He was looking for poems that “get along with each other.”

This is the modern Collins — a poet who has received countless awards and read a poem he wrote on Sept. 11 in front of Congress shortly after the event happened.

Collins will bring his experiences and his multitude of poems to the University tonight, as he speaks in Stewart Theatre at 7 p.m. Collins, who will be doing a poetry reading as well as a question-and-answer session, said he has been participating in public discussions in recent years.

“It has been a part of my life now to engage in the public aspect of writing which involves appearances and readings,” Collins said. “So, it’s something I do on a regular basis now.”

The public appearances are a kind of twist from his normal poetry mindset, according to Collins, as he usually intends for his poems to be for a single reader.

“It’s very different from the act of writing, which is a very solitary thing,” Collins said. “Usually, when I write, I think of my audience as one person, but at readings, you can be reading it in front of hundreds of people.”

Collins said he likes to alter his poems throughout the course of each one.

“I think of poems as miniature journeys or imaginary travel,” he said. “My poems usually start in a common setting because I want to give the reader a sense of time and space. Then, I try to slip into almost another dimension or down rabbit holes. I want to take the reader into more unclear areas.”

Tonight’s event will include the reading of some of Collins’ poems where he will also get feedback and discuss the poems with the audience.

“I usually have three poems that I start with, and then it kind of turns into shuffle mode like on a CD player,” Collins said. “I can kind of judge the mood of an audience and whether they’re reacting to humorous or serious poems.”