The duo will share the stage in a celebration of the power of language on Wednesday December 11th at Honolulu Museum of Art and on Friday, December 13th at Maui Arts & Cultural Center as part of
The Green Room, The Merwin Conservancy’s arts and ecology salon series held in memory of W.S. Merwin
On Wednesday, December 11th at Honolulu Museum of Art and Friday, December 13th at Maui Arts & Cultural Center, The Merwin Conservancy will present two intimate evenings with award-winning poets and translators Robert Hass and Forrest Gander in the second installment of the Memorial Season of The Green Room, an arts and ecology salon series that fosters a reverence for language, nature, and imagination in the community.
At both events, Hass and Gander will share the stage, give readings of their original and translated poetry, and co-host a conversation about the power of language at 7pm. Their presentations will be followed by intimate Q&A sessions with the audience and book signings at courtyard receptions featuring a“pop up” book store. Tickets to both events are now on sale.
Robert Hass, a poet, essayist, and translator, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 2007, served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997, and was the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. He is currently Distinguished Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, Berkeley.
A master of the long poem and a translator, Forrest Gander won the 2019 Pulitzer for Poetry, has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at Harvard University and Brown University.
The Memorial Season of The Green Room is presented by a generous sponsorship from Aqua Aston Hospitality and is supported by a grant from the Atherton Family Foundation and additional support from Halekulani. The Honolulu event is co-presented with Honolulu Museum of Art. The Maui event is made “zero waste” by Maui Huliau Foundation. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit The Merwin Conservancy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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About Robert Hass
Robert Hass is a poet, essayist, and translator. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 2007, he was also twice awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award, once in poetry and once in criticism. Twice a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, he served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. An active environmentalist, he is on the board of directors of the International River and is cofounder of the national environmental education project, River of Words, in which thousands of American school children participate every year. His books, full of the life of northern California, include several volumes of poetry: Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, Sun Under Wood, Time and Materials, The Apple Trees at Olema, and Summer Snow. He is also author of several collections of essays on poetry and culture, including Twentieth Century Pleasures; What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World, which received a PEN award for special excellence in the art of the essay; and Now and Then: The Poet’s Choice Columns, 1996-2000, a collection of his weekly column for The Washington Post. He is co-translator, with Czeslaw Milosz, of ten volumes of Milosz’s poems, including The Collected Poems, Unattainable Earth, Provinces, Facing the River, and Road-side Dog. He has edited volumes of the work of the Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer, Slovenian poet, Tomaz Salmun, and American poet, Robinson Jeffers. He has also published The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa.
About Forrest Gander
Forrest Gander, a poet, novelist, and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert, grew up in Virginia, and taught for many years at Brown University with his wife, poet CD Wright. Among Gander’s most recent books are Be With, awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize; the novel The Trace; and Eiko & Koma, a collaboration with the eponymous movement artists. Gander is also known as a translator whose recent works include Alice Iris Red Horse: Poems by Gozo Yoshimasu and, with Patricio Ferrari, The Galloping Hour: French Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik. He has a history of collaborating with artists such as Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide, and Vic Chesnutt and is a recipient of grants from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.