The Merwin Conservancy

Inspiring innovation in the arts and sciences by advancing the ideas of W.S. Merwin

The Green Room

Next in The Green Room Best-Selling Novelist Richard Powers, Author of ‘The Overstory’, February 6th and 8th

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The Merwin Conservancy Welcomes MacArthur Fellow and Best-Selling Novelist Richard Powers in the First ‘Green Room’ Presentation of 2019

“One of our most prodigiously talented novelists.” – The New York Times Book Review

On Wednesday, February 6th in Honolulu and Friday, February 8th 2018 on Maui, The Merwin Conservancy will present two intimate evenings with with Richard Powers, a MacArthur Fellow, best-selling novelist and author of The Overstory (2018, W.W. Norton), in The Green Room, an arts and ecology salon series that fosters a reverence for language, nature, and imagination in the community. 

Author Richard Powers will be the first Green Room guest of 2019
Author Richard Powers will be the first Green Room guest of 2019

Considered “one of our most prodigiously talented novelists” (New York Times Book Review), Richard Powers is the author of twelve novels that employ multiple narrative frames to explore connections among disciplines as disparate as photography, artificial intelligence, musical composition, genomics, game theory, virtual reality, race, business, and ecology.

Powers has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, has won the National Book Award, and his most recent book, The Overstory, is a New York Times best seller, was a finalist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and is listed as on of the “Best Books of 2018” by the Washington Post, referring to the book as “powerfully galvanizing” and “the most exciting novel about trees you’ll ever read”, which “soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction.”

Richard Powers will appear in The Green Room on February 6th at the Doris Duke Theatre in partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art on O‘ahu, and on February 8th at the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Maui. Both programs begin at 7pm.

For tickets and more event information, visit these links:

“The Green Room connects our community with brilliant minds whose imaginations connect nature, science, language, and art in astonishingly new ways,” said Merwin Conservancy Executive Director Sonnet Coggins. “It is always an incredible privilege to welcome such inspiring thinkers to Hawai’i, but our good fortune to be joined by Richard Powers in February astounds me. My own relationship to nature took on so much nuance, texture, mystery, and awe after immersing myself in The Overstory. I know that other lives will be similarly enriched by Richard Powers’ art, and by his presence here in Hawai’i. “

The Honolulu event is made possible by a partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art, and with additional support from Halekulani Hotel.  The Maui event is presented by FIM Group. The overall series is supported by  a grant from the Atherton Family Foundation. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit The Merwin Conservancy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

FIM Group Sponsor of The Green Room

Halekulani Logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About Richard Powers

Richard Powers is the author of twelve novels that employ multiple narrative frames to explore connections among disciplines as disparate as photography, artificial intelligence, musical composition, genomics, game theory, virtual reality, race, business, and ecology. His fiction and speculative essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Grand Street, The New York Times, Conjunctions, Granta, The Guardian, Common Knowledge, Wired, Tin House, Zoetrope, Paris Review, The Believer, Best American Short Stories, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

His books have won numerous recognitions, including The Rosenthal and Vursell Awards; the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians; the Corrington Award; a PEN/Hemingway Special Citation; the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, two Pushcart Prizes, and TIME Magazine’s Book of the Year. He is a MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award. He won the W.H. Smith Literary Award (UK) for best novel of 2003 and the Ambassador Book Award from the English Speaking Union, 2004. His novel The Echo Maker was given the 2006 National Book Award. The Overstory (2018) was short-listed for the Man-Booker Prize and won the French Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine.

His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2010, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

Praise for The Overstory:

“The Overstory, which contains an energy like that of the trees that link its intertwining stories, is nothing short of stunning. Such links between the human and non-human are mostly hidden to us, but only because we tend not to look very closely (or prefer not to see). Powers’ most beautiful sentences are also the most devastating, which hints at the novel’s hope that death – whether of a person or a plant – is never quite the end that it seems. Until, that is, we look, or prefer, finally, to see. As we are instructed near the novel’s end, ‘What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.’ Plainly put: The Overstory is perhaps as close to such a miracle as we currently deserve.” — Brad Johnson, East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, CA

“The Overstory pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility…a gigantic fable of genuine truths.” – Barbara Kingsolver, New York Review of Books

About The Green Room 
The Green Room is a Hawai‘i-based arts and ecology salon series steeped in the values of The Merwin Conservancy—which include a reverence for nature, language, art and imagination. Launched in 2013, The Green Room presents writers, poets, artists, botanists, and environmentalists –from both Hawai’i and off-island – to create enriching, intimate, meaningful events that spark conversation, community engagement and artistic expression. Events are now held on two islands, on Maui at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and on O‘ahu at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Past events have included presentations by U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, Bill McKibben, Billy Collins, Edward Hirsch, Lewis Hyde, Matthew Zapruder, Michael Wiegers, Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele, Alexis Rockman, Susan Middleton, Cathy Song, Hope Jahren, Bill Porter aka Red Pine, William Finnegan, Michael Ondaatje, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Hirshfield, David Grubin, Susan Casey, Barry Lopez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Terry Tempest Williams, and Dr. Abraham Verghese. For more information, visit: www.merwinconservancy.org/the-green-room.

Coming Up in The Green Room: Artist and Naturalist Alexis Rockman, October 24 & 27

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The Merwin Conservancy Welcomes Acclaimed New York Painter and Naturalist to the Islands and it’s ‘Green Room’ Salon Series

“Rockman’s paintings proffer a vision of the natural world that is
equal parts fantasy and empirical fact.”
– The Smithsonian American Museum

On Wednesday, October 24th and Saturday, October 27th, 2018, The Merwin Conservancy will present two intimate evenings with painter and naturalist Alexis Rockman in The Green Room, an environmental and literary salon series that is hosted by the Conservancy and fosters a reverence for language, nature, and imagination. The event on the 24th takes place at the Doris Duke Theatre in partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art on O‘ahu, and the event on the 27th will be at the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Maui. The events both begin at 7pm.

For tickets and more event information, visit these links:

A visual artist who works at the confluence of art and science, Alexis Rockman boldly depicts what he calls “a natural history psychedelia.”  In this installment of the Green Room, Alexis will highlight his dynamic engagement with ecological change, from prehistory through the present.  Rockman will make a stage presentation of a selection of his visual works, followed by a book signing at a courtyard reception with refreshments and book fair.  

Alexis Rockman Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a child growing up in New York City, Alexis Rockman’s earliest visual inspiration as was found at the iconic American Museum of Natural History and later through 19th–century landscape painting, science fiction film, travels, and firsthand field study. Rockman explores the planet in search of ecological subjects, and along the way he meets with scientists, historians, anthropologists and ecologists and amasses a sizable database of scientific readings and source imagery on the topics of his work.

Spheres of Influence, 2016, oil on wood, 72 x 144 in.

For more than two decades, he has collected organic materials during extended travels to places including Tasmania, Madagascar, and Antarctica and made delicate field drawings of the things that live in each environment from the soil samples collected there, mixed with water and matte acrylic medium – a technique he developed when his art supplies ran out while traveling in the Amazon. From 2009-12, Rockman collaborated with director Ang Lee on the prize-winning film Life of Pi, serving as “Inspirational Artist” preparing conceptual drawings to serve as visual reference. He has been the subject of many exhibition catalogues and monographic publications including Alexis Rockman, published by Monacelli Press in 2003. Rockman lives and works in New York City.

American Bison, Bison bison, 2017, La Bajada Red Clay and acrylic polymer on paper, 18 x 24 in.

“Artist Alexis Rockman plants his feet in different landscapes and feels both their prehistoric and contemporary lives,” said Sonnet Coggins, the Merwin Conservancy’s newly appointed Executive Director. ”His bold imagination fuses the two, paying no mind to distinctions between art and science. We hope the community will join us to hear about his discoveries in the layers of the natural world.”

The Honolulu event is made possible by a partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art, and with additional support from Halekulani Hotel.  The Maui event  is presented by FIM Group. The overall series is supported by  Atherton Family Foundation. Proceeds from the event The Merwin Conservancy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

FIM Group Sponsor of The Green Room

Halekulani Logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About Alexis Rockman:

Alexis Rockman has exhibited extensively worldwide since 1985. He has been featured in a number of solo museum exhibitions including Dioramas at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1996); Alexis Rockman: A Recent History of the World at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield (1999); Manifest Destiny at the Brooklyn Museum (2005; traveling to the Rhode Island School of Design; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; Grand Arts, Kansas City); and a mid career survey Alexis Rockman A Fable for Tomorrow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2010; traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus); Alexis Rockman: The Weight of Air at the Rose Art Museum. East End Field Drawings at the Parrish Museum of Art in Water Mill, NY ( 2015). The Great Lakes Cycle, Grand Rapids Art Museum; Chicago Cultural Center; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; Flint Institute of Art, MI; The Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2018-20) His work is represented in public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

From 2009-12, Rockman collaborated with director Ang Lee on the prize-winning film “Life of Pi,” serving as “Inspirational Artist” preparing conceptual drawings to serve as visual reference.

He has been the subject of many exhibition catalogues and monographic publications including Alexis Rockman, published by Monacelli Press in 2003.

Rockman lives and works in New York City. His detailed biography and exhibition history can be found at alexisrockman.net/cv/.

 

Praise for Alexis Rockman:

“Rockman’s abundant talent as a painter and draftsman can be a liability as much as an asset, lending his realist scenes—warning-cry mergers of fact and fantasy, often on a vast scale—the air of scientific illustrations.” – The New Yorker

“In his beautiful, glowing paintings that tell the story of death stalking us and our polluted environment, [Alexis Rockman] bears better witness than most to lost worlds in the making.” – New York Magazine

“Ultimately [Rockman’s] panoramas are as familiar as they are otherworldly, as idyllic as they are apocalyptic.” – The Chicago Tribune

“Employing an amalgam of traditional Color Field and Hudson River School painting techniques, Rockman tenderly renders—and simultaneously ravages—lush landscapes with the markings of mankind’s destructive footprint, including occasional appearances by deformed fish, genetically-modified crops, and rat infestations.” – Artspace


About The Green Room:

The Green Room is a literary salon series steeped in the values of The Merwin Conservancy, which include a reverence for nature, language, art and imagination. Launched in 2013, The Green Room presents writers, poets, artists, botanists, and environmentalists –from both Hawai’i and off-island – to create enriching, meaningful salons that spark conversation, community engagement and artistic expression. Events are now held 6 times per year, roughly every other month, on Maui at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and on O‘ahu at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Past events have included presentations by Tracy K. Smith, Susan Middleton, Cathy Song, Bill McKibben, Billy Collins, Edward Hirsch, Michael Wiegers, Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele, Hope Jahren, Bill Porter aka Red Pine, William Finnegan, Michael Ondaatje, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Hirshfield, David Grubin, Susan Casey, Barry Lopez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Terry Tempest Williams, and Dr. Abraham Verghese. For more information, visit: www.merwinconservancy.org/the-green-room.

Current U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith to Make Two Hawaii Appearances in The Green Room Literary Salon Series

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In Partnership with Honolulu Museum of Art, The Merwin Conservancy Now Brings its
Popular ‘Green Room’ Literary Salon Series to the Doris Duke Theatre
in Addition to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center

Photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

On Friday, February 9th and Saturday, February 10th, 2018,The Merwin Conservancy will present two intimate evenings with current U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith in The Green Room, an environmental and literary salon series that is hosted by the Conservancy and fosters a reverence for language, nature, and imagination. Both evening programs will begin with a special welcome presented by Hawaii’s State Poet Laureate, Kealoha.

About Smith’s writing, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said, “her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and memory to life; calls on the power of literature as well as science, religion and pop culture. With directness and deftness, she contends with the heavens or plumbs our inner depths—all to better understand what makes us most human.”

The Friday, February 9th event begins at 7:00pm at the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center (MACC). Tickets are $25 per person, with a $10 ticket rate for students with a valid student I.D. Tickets are available at the MACC Box Office, by phone at 808-242-SHOW, or online at http://www.mauiarts.org/merwin. Advance purchase is suggested, as seating is limited.

The Saturday, February 10th event begins at 7:00pm in the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Tickets are $20 per person, with a $15 rate for museum members. Tickets are available at the theater’s box office, at both museum locations’ visitor information centers, by phone at 808-532-6097, or online at http://bit.ly/TKSHoMA, when purchased in advance. Advance purchase is suggested, as seating is limited.

“The fact that Tracy K. Smith is joining us for two appearances in Hawaii during her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate speaks to her generous spirit and her passion for reading for audiences across the country,” said Jason Denhart, Executive Director at The Merwin Conservancy. “We are truly honored and privileged that she will be here to share her gifts with us. We are also very excited to now bring The Green Room to O‘ahu through our new partnership with Honolulu Museum of Art.”

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) and three books of poetry. Her poetry collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005. In 2014 the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith with the Academy Fellowship, awarded to one poet each year to recognize distinguished poetic achievement. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Her next collection of poems, Wade in the Water, is forthcoming in 2018.

In 2017, Smith was appointed the 22nd United States Poet Laureate. Her other awards and honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, a 2008 Essence Literary Award, a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, a fellowship from the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and a 2005 Whiting Award. She is the director of Princeton University’s creative writing program and lives in New Jersey.

Smith will make both appearances in The Green Room with a reading of her poetry, followed by an intimate Q&A with the audience, and book signing at a courtyard reception with refreshments and book fair.

The Maui evening is made possible by the generous support of FIM Group, the presenting sponsor of the event at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

The Honolulu evening is co-presented by The Merwin Conservancy and Honolulu Museum of Art, and generously sponsored by Halekulani Hotel.

A portion of ticket sales from both events benefits the Hawaii non-profit, The Merwin Conservancy.
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About Tracy K. Smith (BIO) 

In 2017, Tracy K. Smith was appointed the 22nd United States Poet Laureate. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) and three books of poetry. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005. In 2014 the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith with the Academy Fellowship, awarded to one poet each year to recognize distinguished poetic achievement. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Her next collection of poems, Wade in the Water, is forthcoming in 2018.

Praise for Tracy K. Smith:

“The surfaces of a Tracy K. Smith poem are beautiful and serene, but underneath, there is always a sense of an unknown vastness. Her poems take the risk of inviting us to imagine, as the poet does, adehat it is to travel in another person’s shoes.” —Toi Derricotte

“Smith’s spare yet beautiful prose transforms her story into a shining example of how one person’s shared memories can brighten everyone’s world.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

The Merwin Conservancy Presents a 90th Birthday Tribute to W.S. Merwin on September 29th

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Evening at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center features Poet Edward Hirsch, Merwin’s Long-Time Editor Michael Wiegers, and other Special Guests

W.S. Merwin by Lisa Kristine
August 21 (Haiku, HI) – On Friday, September 29th, in celebration of his 90th birthday, The Merwin Conservancy presents an evening in tribute to U.S. Poet Laureate, translator, environmentalist, and 40-year Maui resident W.S. Merwin, whose peerless literary gifts have inspired millions and have consistently broken new ground in the world of poetry.

The evening will feature a conversation with celebrated poet Edward Hirsch of the Guggenheim Foundation and Merwin’s longtime editor, Michael Wiegers of Copper Canyon Press and other special guests. This installment of The Green Room, an environmental and literary salon series on Maui that is hosted by the Conservancy, begins at 7:00pm in the McCoy Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, with doors opening at 6:30pm. Tickets are $25 per person, with a $10 student rate available with valid student I.D..
The State of Hawaii will also be present, issuing a Gubernatorial Proclamation proclaiming September 30, 2017, as “W.S. Merwin Day” in Hawaii and presenting Merwin with a special Gubernatorial Commendation for his life-long achievements.

“W.S. Merwin’s meaningful, positive impact on the world, both locally here on Maui and globally through his poetry, is undeniable. We are excited to honor and pay tribute to him, on the occasion of his 90th birthday,” said The Merwin Conservancy’s Executive Director Jason Denhart. “To make it truly memorable, we are absolutely thrilled to welcome renowned poet Edward Hirsch, and Michael Wiegers, whose support of Mr. Merwin’s poetic works and of his vision for the Conservancy has been unwavering. This will be a truly unforgettable evening, and we look forward to seeing the Maui community at the event.”

The presentation will be followed by a courtyard reception with dessert, champagne, a book fair, and live musical entertainment. This event is generously presented by FIM Group. Ticket proceeds benefit the nonprofit Merwin Conservancy.

Media Contact:

Sara Tekula, Communications and Outreach Director
The Merwin Conservancy
Phone: 808-871-5270

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About W.S. Merwin (BIO)
W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and was the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1999 and 2010. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1971 and 2009. He graduated from Princeton University in 1948, where he studied with John Berryman and R.P. Blackmur. His first book of poetry, A Mask for Janus (1952) was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Since then, Merwin has written dozens of books of poetry and prose, and translated dozens more from French, Spanish, Latin, Japanese and Portuguese. His work embodies a bold commitment to experimentation and transformation rooted in the moral necessity of bearing witness, and is influenced by his profoundly environmentalist, pacifist, and anti–imperialist beliefs. He has won many awards, as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. Merwin’s most recent books include Garden Time (2016), The Moon Before Morning (2014), The Shadow of Sirius (2008), The Book of Fables (2007), and Present Company (2005). He married Paula, the love of his life and co-founder of The Merwin Conservancy, in 1983.

About Edward Hirsch (BIO)

Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1950—his accent makes it impossible for him to hide his origins—and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in Folklore.

He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2008, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Edward Hirsch’s first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers (1981), received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (1986), won the National Book Critics Award.
Since then, he has published six additional books of poems: The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994), On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), Special Orders (2008), and The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of poems.

Hirsch is also the author of five prose books, including A Poet’s Glossary (2014), the result of decades of passionate study,Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press).

Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He is now president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

 

About The Merwin Conservancy
The Merwin Conservancy’s mission is to preserve the living legacy of W. S. Merwin, his home and palm forest, for retreat and study for writers, for environmental advocacy and community education. For more information on the organization, visit http://www.merwinconservancy.org

 

About The Green Room

The Green Room is a literary salon series steeped in the values of The Merwin Conservancy—which include a reverence for nature, language, art and imagination. Launched in 2013, The Green Room presents writers, poets, artists, botanists, and environmentalists –from both Hawai’i and off-island – to create enriching, meaningful salons that spark conversation, community engagement and artistic expression. Past events have included presentations by William Finnegan, Hope Jahren, Pualania Kanaka‘ole Kanahele, Bill Porter (aka Red Pine), Michael Ondaatje, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Hirshfield, David Grubin, Susan Casey, Barry Lopez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Terry Tempest Williams, and Dr. Abraham Verghese. For more information, visit: www.merwinconservancy.org/the-green-room.