Richard Blanco, Obama’s fifth inaugural poet, and whose poem, One Today, was read at the 2013 inauguration, is a true creative who practices a kind of Wild Writing that he calls Fever Writing. In this delicious interview he talks about writing as a kind of fishing. His work asks us the universal questions: Where am I from? Where do I belong? Who am I in this world?
Please listen for the poem he reads to us at the end of this 20 plus minute interview.
Richard Blanco is the author of Looking for the Gulf Motel, How to Love a Country, and many others.
Interview :: August 20, 2020
In 2015, the Academy of American Poets chose Blanco to serve as its first Education Ambassador. He has been named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and has received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College and the University of Rhode Island. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, as well as major media from around the world, including CNN, Telemundo, AC360, BBC, Univision, and PBS. Blanco’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry series, The Nation, The New Republic, the Huffington Post, and Condé Nast Traveler.