Essayist, Poet, Buddhist Monk Ira Sukrungruang Reads

Sunday, March 1, 4 p.m., Darvill’s

— from Jill McCabe Johnson

Perhaps the one thing that consistently permeates Ira Sukrungruang’s (pronounced sook-rung-rung) is his self-deprecating humor. That and his lyric voice. That and his keen observation of human nature. As you can see, it is impossible to simplify the marvelously layered writings of this U.S.-born, Thai-American poet and essayist, despite his smooth and deceivingly simple writing style.

As an example, the opening lines of his essay “Chop Suey”(Brevity, Issue 19) start simply, and by the third sentence, the reader is drawn into the heart of an impossible problem: “My mother was a champion bowler in Thailand. This was not what I knew of her. I knew only her expectations of me to be the perfect Thai boy.” Sukrungruang begins directly enough, but soon shifts from what one might call standard prose to something far more lyric, like when he describes the appeal of bowling to his ten-year-old self. “I liked the sound of a bowling alley. I felt in control of the weather, the rumble of the ball on the wood floor like the coming of a storm, and the hollow explosion of the pins, distant lightning.” This facility to combine an intriguing narrative with equally intriguing metaphor and language creates an effect of story-telling that is at once entertaining and enchanting.

Raised in the Midwest and teaching at the University of South Florida, Sukrungruang comes across in person as affable and middle-American as they come. One might not guess that part of the fabric of his congenial conversation is the influence of having spent time each year visiting Thailand, often in retreat at Buddhist temples. And yet, with more of that self-effacing humor, Sukrungruang commented during his 2014 Artsmith artist residency that when his students ask with a little awe in their eyes what his life is like as a writer and Buddhist monk, he tells them, “I go home, eat junk food, and watch bad TV, just like most people.”

Still, his discipline as a writer and Buddhist finds its way into his writing. In an interview with Silas Hansen in The Journal, Sukrungruang noted, “I think when I write more meditative essays, I find myself in silence. I find myself meditating. I allow my mind to go in strange places.” Those strange places are what I, as a reader of his poems and essays, find most delightful: that mixture of personal experience, poetic sensibilities, and a willingness to wander into the strange and surprising. In the same interview, Sukrungruang shares one bit of classroom advice, which also gives insight into a visual aspect his own writing. “I tell my students to look at the shape of paragraphs. I tell them that before I even read a word, I flip through the pages seeing what I can learn via shape. Is a piece too blocky? Is it relying too much on exposition? Is it too short and choppy? Too much scene? Poetry taught me shape matters.”

Sukrungruang comes to Orcas Island to lead Artsmith’s Spring 2015 Writer Island writing workshop at the Kangaroo House Bed and Breakfast this weekend. Islanders can hear him read from his latest works this Sunday, March 1, at Darvill’s Bookstore in Eastsound at 4:00 pm. For more information, please contact info@orcasartsmith.org.