Quantum Spirituality with Sara Troy and her guest Ronald Okuaki Lieber, on air from April 22
His award-winning poetry reveals key messages about identity, belonging, and the human experience, deeply shaped by his upbringing as the child of a Japanese mother and an American Jewish father in a military family. Having moved 14 times in his first 14 years, he developed a unique lens on culture, adaptation, and inner resilience. These themes echo through both his writing and his 24-year career as a psychoanalyst, where listening deeply to others has enriched his understanding of the human psyche. Drawing profound connections between psychoanalysis and poetry, he explores how the unconscious mind and the creative process intertwine, offering insight, healing, and a shared sense of truth.
“Many people who come to see me, as a psychoanalyst, are searching for answers, either in how to live or how to understand the world,” says Lieber. “Some have serious concerns about love, life and purpose, and others feel like something’s not quite right, that something’s missing. The search for how to live life can be aided by psychotherapy, but also by poetry.”
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Ronald Okuaki Lieber, born in Tokyo just after World War II to a Japanese mother and a Jewish American soldier father, brings a richly woven cultural perspective to his debut poetry collection, The Long Journey Out, which earned praise from Kirkus Reviews and was a finalist for the North American Poetry Books Award. His poems—finalists in competitions such as The Knightsville Poetry Prize and the New Ohio Review Poetry Contest—have appeared in esteemed journals, including The Nation, American Poetry Review, New England Review, and Seneca Review. Having lived in 14 places by age 14 before settling in Petersburg, Virginia, Lieber’s life has been shaped by constant movement, deep listening, and cross-cultural insight. After earning a BS in Biology and serving in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, he completed an MFA at Columbia and went on to deepen his literary voice through international residencies. In his late 40s, he trained as a psychoanalyst, eventually becoming director and journal editor at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. With over 24 years in private practice and experience as a retired English professor and plant medicine guide, Lieber brings a rare and profound depth to both his poetry and his psychoanalytic work, where language, healing, and the unconscious beautifully intersect.
He resides in New York, splitting time between New York City and Copake in the Hudson Valley.
‘Lieber uses small and infinite details to explore the mind in this poetry collection…. A penetrating, measured group of poems exploring wonder, emotion, and the ways the world moves us.”—Kirkus Reviews
https://www.ronaldokuakilieber.com
www.Facebook.com/ronald.o.lieber
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