9/25/97
ATHENS, Ohio -- Pulitzer Prize winner W.S. Merwin, considered one of the world's most celebrated senior poets, will read from his work next Friday (Oct. 3) on Ohio University's Athens campus. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 8 p.m. in 194 Irvine Auditorium on the campus' West Green.
Merwin, a Princeton graduate, is the author of more than 18 books of poetry and 20 books of translations. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for The Carrier of Ladders, and also has won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and awards from the Academy of American Poets, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.
The former poetry editor for The Nation, Merwin has de dicated much of his writing and his life to environmental preservation. He and his wife live in Haiku, Hawaii, where he is restoring an abandoned pineapple farm and establishing a rain forest.
Merwin visited Ohio University in 1988 for the university's Spring Literary Festival.
Merwin will appear at a reception and book signing following the Friday reading, which is being sponsored by the Program in Creative Writing in the Department of English.