In this episode, we’ll discuss the life and work of poet W. S. Merwin. Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate in 2010, William Stanley Merwin had a career that spanned seven decades. A poet, translator, gardener and environmental activist, Merwin has become one of the most widely read and honored poets in America, the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes.
Over the years, his poetic voice moved from the more formal to a more distinctly American voice. As the Atlantic Monthly said, “The intentions of Merwin’s poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.”
Merwin’s work was also the inspiration for one of our first special exhibits, Palm: All Awake in the Darkness. Learn more about Merwin and take a retrospective look at the exhibit here.
For this episode, we are joined by Sonnet Coggins, Executive Director of the Merwin Conservancy, a thriving arts and ecology organization on the island of Maui where Merwin lived. It conserves a lush and rare 19-acre palm forest that Merwin and his wife, Paula, tended to, as well as honors the sense of wonder that brought forth Merwin’s poetry and his garden. Learn more about the Merwin Conservancy here.
Sonnet Coggins is the Executive Director of the Merwin Conservancy. After completing a Masters degree in Education at the University of Virginia, Sonnet moved to France, then later completed a Master of Arts in French Language and Literatures, with a focus on cultural history and interpretation of historic sites. She worked with the Denver Art Museum, then the Williams College Museum of Art, where she co-curated The Field is the World: Williams, Hawai’i, and Material Histories in the Making. Sonnet has been with the Conservancy since 2018.
Sonnet is interviewed by Christopher Burrow, Director of Operations at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place April 3, 2024 and was recorded over Zoom.