Richard Blanco

"Richard Blanco was made in Cuba, assembled in Spain and imported to the USA," according to his official biography. A success story of the American dream. That's what Barack Obama believes, having assigned him a central role in the inauguration ceremony of his second term as president, to be held in Washington on January 21, 2013.

Richard Blanco was born in Madrid 44 years ago, but is of Cuban origin. His mother was a bank teller and his father a bookkeeper. Family history says the poet received his name after Richard M. Nixon, his father's favorite president for his stance against Fidel Castro.

He now lives in Miami, where his parents emigrated from Spain when he was 45 days old. At the inauguration ceremony he will read an unpublished poem on the theme "Our People, Our Future" and will become the youngest, first Hispanic and first gay person to do so.

Blanco is a consultant in the field of engineering and as such has worked in Miami, where he lives with his partner. He worked as a civil engineer before dedicating himself to poetry. He helped design bridges, road improvements and an architectural plan for south Miami. But then he began to ask questions about his identity, the origin of his parents and felt "a deep need to write," as he said. However, after adolescence he began to ask himself questions about "identity, cultural negotiations and who am I, where do I belong, what is this about Cuba that my parents talked about." That concern led him to a "deep need" to write.

His career began with a collection of poems, "City of a Hundred Fires," with which he won the Agnes Lynch Starrett poetry prize from the University of Pittsburgh. Later he published "Directions to the Beach of the Dead" and in 2012 his third work, "Looking for the Gulf Motel," came out.

Blanco is a consultant in the field of engineering and as such has worked in Miami, where he lives with his partner. However, after adolescence he began to ask himself questions about "identity, cultural negotiations and who am I, where do I belong, what is this about Cuba that my parents talked about." That concern led him to a "deep need" to write.

Blanco's first collection of poems, City of a Hundred Fires, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett poetry prize in 1997 and was published by University of Pittsburgh Press. He taught for a time at Central Connecticut State University, Georgetown University and American University in Washington, while continuing his work as an engineer. Recently he completely left engineering to write full time.

While City of a Hundred Fires and Blanco's second book, Directions to the Beach of the Dead (University of Arizona Press, 2005) explore his Cuban heritage, his most recent collection Looking for the Gulf Motel, published last year, incorporates his life as a gay man in conservative Cuban culture.

Now Blanco, who is also working on a memoir, is focusing on a completely new task: composing what is known as an "occasional poem," written to commemorate a specific event.

Curriculum vitae. https://www.richard-blanco.com/richard-blanco-poet/Richard-Blanco-CV.pdf