Judy Collins Brings Lyrical Mastery to Poetry with Latest Project

Indomitable. How else do you describe storied singer-songwriter Judy Collins? The ever-youthful Collins is currently on the road celebrating her 85th birthday, which was officially on May 1, 2024. And while artists of her vintage might be expected to be doing some kind of greatest-hits tour, that’s not the case for Collins, who is not only promoting her most current record, 2022’s Grammy-nominated Spellbound, but also her recently released book, Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss and Redemption. To call the Seattle native a creative dynamo is an understatement, but it’s the only way she knows how to approach life.

“I always say I’m the Betty White of the music industry,” she explains with a laugh. “I have the blessing of having had incredibly good health and incredible stamina. I work out all the time — I’ve been doing that for years. I have been given a second career, doing all kinds of things that I’ve wanted to do that I’m doing. And that’s always refreshing — I’ve done a lot of writing. The last book I put out, in 2017, was called Cravings: How I Conquered Food. I wrote [2011’s] Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music before that. I’ve written eight books over the years. I’ve been doing this, singing, performing, telling jokes, writing books, and going on tour for 65 years. That’s a long time.”

And while that might seem impressive for an artist half her age, this flurry of activity is all the more remarkable given the fact that husband Louis Nelson, who Collins had been with for 46 years since they met at an ERA fundraiser in 1978, died on December 3, 2024.

“It’s a disaster and the worst,” Collins said. “It’s a good thing that I’m working because it’s the only thing that can get you through these kinds of tragedies. And it was a tragedy. He was diagnosed with undiagnosed cancer. It suddenly came upon us and he only had two weeks to live after they found it.”

Nelson’s influence had a direct effect on Collins’ aforementioned projects as he challenged her to write 365 poems in a year, a dare she took on back in 2016.

“In my new book, I’ve got 100 of my new poems,” Collins explained. “In a way, it’s a dedication and celebration of my husband. And then I carved out and hatched the songs from some of those poems. It’s my first album of all self-penned material. I wish I could call Leonard Cohen and tell him about that. He’s the one who started me on this writing path — and I’ve never stopped since 1966.”

Possessing the equivalent of a perpetual engine of creativity, Collins’ drive found her recording roughly 50 albums dating back to her 1961 debut, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, and co-directing 1974’s Academy Award–nominated documentary Antonia: A Portrait of a Woman. With this recent book of poetry, the logical question: Who are her favorite poets?

William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616)

“I love Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a poet. What resonates with me was his humaneness. I love the humane poem.”

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963)

“It doesn’t hurt that she killed herself, and I had a sympathetic note for suicide. You know you can’t go too far wrong when you look at the poetic side of the suicide.”

Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997)

“You’ve always got to have Ginsberg in front of you because of his creativity and ability to pull things out of thin air.”

For this current string of dates, Collins will be mixing up material from Spellbound along with songs from her deep canon. As someone who has become known as an interpreter of other artists ranging from Lennon/McCartney and Stephen Sondheim to the pop band Train and new wave duo Yaz, her rationale for covering a song is pretty straightforward.

“On this tour, people can expect all kinds of music,” Collins said. “It’s been a lifelong career of falling in love with songs. I have no idea [what attracts me to a song]. I fall in love with a song because I fall in love with a song. I am not an analyst. I’m not a music critic. I don’t have any way to put numbers or edginess into it. It’s just a love affair. It’s not unlike how you don’t make any qualifications to a person you fall in love with.”

Judy Collins will be appearing on July 10 at The Suffolk, 118 E. Main Street, Riverhead. For more information, visit suffolktheater.com or call 631-727-4343.