With a new book of poetry steaming on the shelves, a new novel set for release this spring, another book of poems due out shortly after that, and an ongoing gig as a distinguished writer in residence at the University of Hawai'i's English Department, author R. Zamora (Zack) Linmark is, once again, everywhere his imagination takes him.

Which is to say, he's perfectly at home. Linmark performs tonight at the annual "For the Love of Bamboo Ridge" fundraiser at Manoa Valley Theater.

Born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Honolulu, Linmark is best known for his groundbreaking "Rolling the R's," a novel in vignettes that drew critical acclaim nationally but, he says, largely confounded local audiences.

"People didn't know what to do with the book," he says. "People here were like, 'What is it? It's not a novel. It's not a collection of short stories. Why are there poems in here?' "

As a gay Filipino-American raised in Hawai'i, Linmark's voice and perspective were considered unique and compelling if somewhat difficult to categorize. But the hyphen-heavy labels did little to capture the sometimes playful, sometimes dark explorations into culture, sexuality and identity.

With "Rolling the R's" now taught in college, Linmark's latest publication marks an opportunity for his readers to demonstrate how much they've caught up.

"Prime Time Apparitions" finds Linmark in fine laughing, raging, contemplative form, once again tweaking expectations of poetic form and content in works that seem to delight in the collisions of personal and cultural identity, sex, art, history and pop culture they invoke.

This spring, Linmark returns with "Leche," the long-awaited sequel to "Rolling." Yet, the author cautions, the two are very distinct works. "It's a totally different writer, and a totally different kind of writing," he says. "If it was like 'Rolling,' I'd be very disappointed."

Another collection of poetry, "The Evolution of a Sigh" also is tentatively scheduled for release this spring.

Linmark came to Hawai'i in 1977. Then a 9-year-old with a prodigious imagination, he gravitated toward film and music and loved collecting books, though not necessarily reading them.

His first attempt at creative writing came in the fourth grade, when, as part of an assignment, he wrote a story about a princess who falls in love with the wrong guy.

"He was a man, but he was made out of saws," Linmark says, laughing. "He tells her, 'Although I love you, I can't be with you because I'll cut you up.' Like, where did that come from?"

Linmark's sense of the humorous and the macabre manifested in a high-school fascination with the English band The Smiths, who in turn turned him on (via "Oscillating Wildly") to Oscar Wilde and other writers.

His love of theater led him to the UH theater department and professor Terence Knapp, who encouraged the actor to enroll in creative writing "and write your own damn monologues."

Linmark earned a bachelor's degree and a master's in English from UH, where he was mentored by Faye Kicknosway and where he formed close alliances with writers such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Justin Chin, Lisa Asaji and others.

"Rolling the R's" grew out of a 1993 trip to the Philippines that Linmark made as part of a Fulbright Scholarship program.

"Going back to my once-upon-a-time home was so mind-blowing, I didn't write for a year and a half," he said. "The realization that things had changed and that people no longer recognized me as one of them was hard to swallow. I could accept that if I was coming from the Mainland. But I was from Hawai'i. My port of entry was Kalihi, which — hello! — was like mini Ilocos Norte!"

Once he recovered from the shock, Linmark wrote a vignette for Jessica Hagedorn's "Charlie Chan is Dead" anthology, which then earned him a commitment from New York-based Kaya Press to publish the novel that would be "Rolling the R's."

"For a while, I was in denial that Manila could be a home," he says. "But it is a home in the sense that it feeds me and I have built a relationship with the city. When you have a relationship that you nurture and explore, that's a home."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.