Richard Blanco

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The poet Richard Blanco sitting on a park bench.

Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968 in Madrid , Spain ) is an American poet of Cuban descent . In 2013, he was the fifth inaugural poet during the inauguration of US President Barack Obama .

Live and act

Blanco was born in Madrid to Cuban immigrants. When he was a toddler, his parents moved to the United States , where he lived briefly in New York before spending the remainder of his childhood and youth in Miami . He was considered mathematically gifted and therefore decided to study engineering in Miami. After completing his studies, he worked as an engineer for some time until he began writing poetry in 1991 as part of a search for meaning. His first book was published in 1999. He decided to pursue further studies, completing a master's degree in arts and creative writing . Since then he has been a lecturer in creative writing at various universities, e. B. at Georgetown University .

Blanco is an award-winning author. In 2015 he received the Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Memoir category for The Prince of los Cocuyos . In his poetry he mainly deals with questions such as the search for individual identity or ethnic origin.

He now lives in Bethel , Maine .

Inaugural poet

During the inauguration for the second term of US President Barack Obama, Blanco became the official inaugural poet, the fifth only in US history. On January 21, 2013, he recited the poem " One Day ", which was written especially for the event. Blanco was the first Latino or Hispano , the first immigrant, the first US-American of Cuban descent, the youngest poet and the first openly homosexual inaugural poet in the history of this tradition.

Works (selection)

  • City of a Hundred Fires (1998)
  • Nowhere But Here (2004)
  • Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005)
  • Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012)
  • One Today (2013)
  • Boston Strong (2013)
  • For All of Us, One Today (2013)
  • The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood (2014)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Blanco, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lyric poet of Cuban descent
DATE OF BIRTH 15th February 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid , Spain