This September, 25th United States poet laureate Arthur Sze will come to Honolulu for the first stop of his "Words Bridging Worlds" project, a four-city national tour encouraging Americans to engage with translation. Organized by the Library of Congress in collaboration with several Hawaiʻi nonprofit organizations, programming will take place across two consecutive days, with a public presentation on Friday, September 18 at Mission Memorial Auditorium and a translation workshop to follow on Saturday, September 19. These programs are both free and open to the public with pre-registration required. Registration is now available through The Library of Congress.

This programming is being organized with the support and participation of several Hawaiʻi-based nonprofit organizations. These include The Merwin Conservancy—a Maui-based nonprofit organization founded to steward the home, garden, and legacy of the renowned poet and ecologist W.S. Merwin—where Arthur Sze was a resident in 2022. Arthur Sze’s public presentation at Mission Memorial Auditorium is made possible through the support of the Honolulu Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts. The Hawaiʻi Center for the Book, housed at the Hawaiʻi State Library, will host a translation workshop the following day, on September 19. Additional support for this program is provided by the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund.

The September 18th event will launch Arthur Sze’s “Words Bridging Worlds” tour, the main project of his second term as poet laureate which empowers readers to dissolve the boundaries between reading, writing, and translating poetry. Recognizing the Hawaiian Islands as a vital crossroads of cultural and linguistic exchange, and honoring the vitality and enduring presence of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Arthur Sze will be in conversation with Puakea Nogelmeier, co-founder of Awaiaulu, an organization dedicated to fortifying the continuity of Hawaiian language and knowledge. Hawaiʻi State Poet Laureate Lee Tonouchi, Da Pidgin Guerrilla, will introduce the event, drawing a connection between the national and Hawaiʻi’s state laureateship, which is hosted by The Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities, and Hawaiʻi State Public Library System. On the afternoon of September 19th, a translation workshop will take place at the Hawaiʻi Center for the Book, allowing participants to practice their own translations.