W. S. Merwin is a poet and translator. He has become one of the most widely read poets in America. Merwin began his writing career at the age of five writing hymns for his father, a Presbyterian minister. As a young man he traveled through Europe and fell in love with words and language leading him to find work as a literary translator. During his career he met and got to know Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Adrienne Rich. In 1999 he was named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress for a
jointly held position with poets Rita Dove and Louise Gluck. He is the recipient of the Golden Wreath, an international poetry award, and the 2004 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a two time Pulitzer Prize winner, and has won the National Book Award, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The lecture is scheduled for Tuesday, November 9, 2010.