Zen monk poet to give public reading

By LILIANA GARCIA

Seido Ray Ronci, an accomplished writer, Zen monk and director of Hokoku-An Zendo in Columbia, will give a poetry reading today at 8 p.m. in the Alice Peters Auditorium. The free event is the third in the San Joaquin Literary Association’s New Visiting Writing Series, which aims to reinforce the importance of literature in the Fresno State community.

Ronci’s work has been published in many journals including, “Ploughshares,” “Prairie Schooner,” “Rattle,” “Iowa Review” and “Agni,” among others.

“This Rented Body,” a full-length collection of Ronci’s poetry, will be published in the summer. Pressed Water Press published his most recent publication, “The World of Difference,” in 2001. He is the author of five chapbooks of poetry.

He has won many awards, including the John H Vreeland Award for Literary Composition from the University of Nebraska. Ronci has also won an Academy of American Poets Intro Award.

His love for the simplistic use of language is what many people enjoy about his work, assistant professor of poetry Timothy Skeen said.

“His poems are always rooted where we live, he always keeps one foot on the ground,” Skeen said, noting that the benefit from lecture “is something they cannot get from a movie or a book of prose. It’s something that [students] can only get by showing up to the reading.”

The event is co-sponsored by the master’s in fine arts program, the Department of English, the College of Arts and Humanities and Associated Students.

The next featured visitor in Visiting Writing Series will be Polish Poet Krystyna Lenkowska, who will give a lecture on April 28.