Seasons of Verse – November Poetry Series

Seasons of Verse is a curated poetry reading series held inside the peaceful landscape of Shinzen Garden, featuring four unique events that align with the rhythm of the seasons. The series will showcase the vibrant voices of Fresno-area poets and offer one open mic event to welcome emerging and community writers.

Included with Garden Admission

Meet our Poets

Brynn Saito is the author of three poetry collections, including Under a Future Sky (Red Hen Press, 2023). She co-edited with Brandon Shimoda The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025) and her work has appeared in the New York Times, VOGUE, and American Poetry Review. Fourth generation Korean American and Japanese American, Brynn teaches in the English department at Fresno State.

Corrinne Clegg Hales is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Underground, Ahshata Press, Separate Escapes, winner of the the Richard Snyder Poetry Prize, Ashland Poetry Press, and To Make it Right, winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize, Autumn House Press.  She has also published two chapbooks, and her poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies.  Awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the River Styx Poetry Prize.  She taught for 35 years in the Creative Writing program at Fresno State. 

Aideed Medina is a Fresno Poet Laureate and her work has appeared in various publications, including  Issue #26 of The Common: Farmworkers Portfolio and Somos Xicanas Anthology, Riot of Roses Publishing House, and in the forthcoming literary collection, The Selena Reader, University of Texas Press, and featured in Eclectic Collective theatrical productions, The Fresno Grand Opera, and 559 Mural Project murals. She is the author of 31 Hummingbird, Editorial Xingao, Segmented Bodies, Prickly Pear Publishing, and a binational chapbook, selected poems from Segmented Bodies/ Salmos de la Sierra Madre, with Aziz Córdova, published by Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico.

Mike Maniquiz‘s poems have been published in Mid-American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, among others. He was awarded the AWP Intro Award and a finalist in the WAGS-UMI Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award. His literary works have been published in national and international anthologies, such as Pinoy Poetics (Meritage Press, 2004), One Hundred Love Poems (U of the Philippines Press, 2005), Love Gathers All, (Ethos Books, Singapore, 2002). His book, Revolver, was published by the University of the Philippines Press (1997). He is a faculty member in the English Department at Fresno State. An avid vintage motorcycle and Vespa collector and enthusiast, he admits to having neglected poetry for endeavors much more mundane and carburetted. But he still writes, just doesn’t send them out for publication.