Krystyna Lenkowska, an emerging voice in contemporary Polish poetry, will give a free

public reading Thursday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. at California State University, Fresno. It will be

held in the Alice Peters Auditorium, inside the Peters Business Building, 5245 N. Backer Ave.

Lenkowska, whose work is identified with a new generation of poets in post-Communist Poland, is the author of the forthcoming bilingual poetry collection “Eve’s Choice” (2005). The reading will be bilingual in Polish and English. Fresno resident Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough translates Lenkowska’s poems into English.

The event is the fourth in the San Joaquin Literary Association’s new Visiting Writer Series. Co-hosted by the Department of English and the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, the series aims to attract writers and literary figures from across the publishing world to reinforce the importance of literature within the University community. Admission is free.

Novelist Steve Yarbrough, an endowed professor of Creative Writing at Fresno State, said Lenkowska’s poetry is original, imaginative, and “quintessentially feminine.” The rich legacy of Polish poetry, including the work of Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Zbigniew Herbert, has left an indelible imprint on Lenkowska and her peers.

“Krystyna is enormously respectful of the big Polish poets,” Yarbrough said. “But she also consciously sets out to do something different. She’s drawn to different subject matter than the older poets would have been. There’s much more of an edge of contemporary experience.”

Lenkowska, who lives in Rzeszow, Poland, has published four books of poetry in Polish. Her poems have appeared in the United States in the journals “Chelsea” and “Confrontation.” Samples of her translated poems can be found on her

Web site: www.krystynalenkowska.yes.pl.

The event is co-sponsored by the SJLA, the MFA Program, the College of Arts and Humanities, and Associated Students Inc. For more information, contact the English Department at 278-2553.