The Merwin Conservancy to Welcome United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón to The Green Room series at Maui Arts & Cultural Center

The Merwin Conservancy—a Maui-based nonprofit organization founded to steward the home, garden, and legacy of the late poet and ecologist W.S. Merwin—will host the next in a series of popular arts and ecology literary events known as The Green Room. An evening with award-winning poet and our current U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will take place on Maui at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center on January 16, starting at 7 PM. Tickets are on sale now at www.mauiarts.org.

Ada Limón is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States and the author of six books of poetry. As Poet Laureate, her signature project, called You Are Here, focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. Recently, her poem “In Praise of Mystery,” engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper Spacecraft, was launched to the second moon of Jupiter in October 2024. 

Limón was a resident at The Merwin Conservancy in 2022, and during that time, participated in The Merwin Conservancy’s Green Room series on O‘ahu. Of her time in residence, Limón reflected: “To be in W.S. Merwin’s home, to write and take this moment to rekindle my own relationship with my writing, it feels like remembering again that being an artist is possible. Being here, I’m reminded that there is power in healing, and that healing is possible for a land, and for a maker of poems.”

Limón is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Guggenheim fellowship, and was named a TIME magazine woman of the year. Limón’s book The Carrying won the National Book Critics Circle Award and her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of two children’s books: In Praise of Mystery, with illustrations by Peter Sís; and And, Too, The Fox, released in 2025. 

Blending rhythmic lyricism with a conversational intimacy, Limón’s poems engage a wide range of themes that resonate widely with readers. Her poems explore both the grief and wonder experienced in modern life—traversing themes such as family, gender roles, love, loss, and illness— and often turn to the animal and plant worlds as a reminder of humans’ interconnectedness to nature and to one another.

As poet laureate, Limón has cultivated her interest in connecting poetry with place. Her signature project You Are Here includes an edited anthology of poetry about the natural world and the ways landscapes all around us are changing. This collection includes fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by some of the most celebrated writers of our time. In the introduction to the anthology, Limón writes: “ “Poems are like trees in this way. They let us breathe together. In each line break, caesura, and stanza, there’s a place for us to breathe. Not unlike a redwood forest or a line of crepe myrtles in an otherwise cement landscape, poems can be a place to stop and remember that we too are living. W.S. Merwin wrote in his poem ‘Place’: ‘On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree.’ I think I would add that I would also like to write a poem. Maybe I’d even write a poem about a tree?” In addition, Limón will work with the National Parks Service to feature seven site-specific poetry installations in seven national parks.

Sonnet Coggins, the Executive Director of the Merwin Conservancy, says “We are so excited to welcome our Poet Laureate Ada Limón back to Maui to connect with our Maui community through The Green Room. Ada’s voice is beautiful, resonant, and critical. She draws attention to the many ways people, place and poetry are interconnected.” The Green Room is a program of the Merwin Conservancy in its 12th year. Ada Limón’s Green Room program is generously supported by The Atherton Family Foundation, The Makana Aloha Foundation. Green Room Patrons & Hosts.

General Admission tickets are $25 each plus fees. Students are $10 plus fees. Those who wish to become Green Room Patrons with a gift of $250 will have preferred seating and will be invited to a pre-event catered reception. Tickets for the January 16 program at Maui Arts & Cultural Center are available at www.mauiarts.org.