W.S. Merwin Reads for 57th Annual Poetry Day

CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce that poet, translator, and environmental activist W.S. Merwin will read in celebration of the 57th annual Poetry Day on Thursday, October 6. In a career spanning five decades, Merwin has become one of the most honored and widely read poets in America. From his first collection, A Mask for Janus, which W.H. Auden chose for the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1952, to The Shadow of Sirius, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Merwin has written with sheer grace and limpid power about the natural world, time, and memory. Appointed U.S. poet laureate in 2010, Merwin lives, writes, and gardens in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He has spent the last 30 years planting 19 acres with over 800 endangered species of palm, creating a sustainable forest. The property has recently been protected as the Merwin Conservancy.
     What: Poetry Day: W.S. Merwin
     When: Thursday, October 6, 6 p.m.
     Where: Harold Washington Library
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 South State Street
     Tickets: Free admission on a first-come, first-served basis
Inaugurated by Robert Frost in 1955, Poetry Day is one of the most distinguished poetry reading series in the country, having featured such poets of note as T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Carl Sandburg, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Robert Hass.
Find information about other Poetry Foundation events at www.poetryfoundation.org/ programs/events.