Ricardo Blanco's Blog
Citizen of Nowhere
About
Ricardo Blanco is a version or translation of writer and translator Richard Gwyn. One or other of them has been composing this blog since July 2011. Richard grew up in Breconshire, Wales, and following several years in London, spent a decade travelling on and around the Mediterranean, chronicled in his memoir The Vagabond’s Breakfast (a Wales Book of the Year, 2012). His first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (Doubleday 2007), set in Barcelona, was translated into many languages and brought international recognition. His other novels include Deep Hanging Out and The Blue Tent, which appeared in French translation as Les Invités (Gallimard 2022). His poetry collections include Walking on Bones, Being in Water, Sad Giraffe Café, and, most recently, Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure. He spent much of the time between 2011-2015 travelling in Latin America, preparing and translating a major anthology, The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (Seren 2016). An account of these journeys, Ambassador of Nowhere: A Latin American Pilgrimage, was published by Seren in 2024. His other translations include collections by the Argentinian poets Joaquín O. Giannuzzi and Jorge Fondebrider, and Impossible Loves, by the Colombian Darío Jaramillo (Carcanet 2019). Invisible Dog, a selection from the Mexican poet Fabio Morábito is due from Carcanet in November, 2024.
Richard is represented by Anna Webber at United Agents.
Ricardo Blanco's Blog 
Love your book titles!
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Thanks for the review. I’m interested in your comment about having no desire to read novels, as I’m feeling much the same. And yet I keep going back, like to one of those bad all-you-can-eat buffet bars where the food is mediocre at best and you always leave feeling slightly sick. Is it because so few modern novels get beyond the cliched? Or because the marketing and promotions promise so much more than is ever delivered? Are our expectations too high? Conrad and Flaubert were not only supreme narrative artists striving to penetrate and transpose reality, but also interpreters of the moral issues of their times. That’s a tall order in this age of viral information and moral relativism. As a teacher of creative writing, what do you tell your students about the work they aspire to?
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Hi Tom Thanks for this comment, and your earlier one, which I failed to respond to, although that too had me thinking. I didn’t look at the blog during August as I was (ironically, in view of the last post) working on a novel. The thing about not reading novels came out of chats with friends, some of whom are violently anti-novel (which I am not). That is to say, they value the short story and poetry far more. In general terms I am inclined to agree with them, but it all comes down to specific cases in the end. I have read a few novels over the past couple of years that I value very much, though I can’t think of more than one or two that were written in English. Interpreting the moral issues of the times – or at least reflecting them – is, perhaps, something that novelists do even without consciously attempting to. Presumably Fifty Shades of Grey does this, no? It is what the novel does, even when it does it badly. As for teaching Creative Writing (a rather suspect occupation, don’t you think?) I tell my students to read as widely and indiscriminately as possible at first so as to discover their own predilections, not to be constrained by any kind of canon (but to be aware of them, at the very least). Most of all I advise them to read as much literature in translation as possible (because, contrary to what the UK/USA publishing industry seems to believe, not everything of value happens in English first) and finally I tell the fiction/prose writers to read poetry. All best Richard
> Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 23:38:40 +0000 > To: richard.gwyn@hotmail.com >
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That sounds like good advice for your students. Good luck with your own novel. Cheers, Tom
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Bravo. The older I grow, the sadder I get when I think of the poets and writers that kids in the US are never introduced to. A group of young people visiting Machado’s grave recently gives hope some voices will never be lost.
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So sorry you didn’t enjoy my book. I’ll keep trying, anyway! Hwyl! Jan Morris
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I dont know, propably you want to promote a human face . You look exhausted .
You dont smile ..
I take medicines for that .
I take airipiprazole and xanax and lyrica .
Also I had problem with law .
I had an official paper which was very important for the gonverment .The imagination of people is harmfull sometimes … I write poems ..or I try to write .I am not a human neither woman , You need muisturizing in your face , you have to take care yourself . .. Follow doctors order ,walking siX miles per day ,reach the target and after you will be able to follow a programme in a gym . Ehlers Danlos Syndrom is a disorder of connective tissues . Main characteristics of Syndrom is hypermobillity,and flexibillity with dislocations.
I dont like that . How about to be you my poor myself?
What is more important the look or the feeling . The sense of noisence.. or the sense of the enviromental pollution . I can dance samba … . I dont know spanish however I love My boredom ,which is productive I would write a song ..
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Hola Ricardo, me encantó tu libro el desayuno de vagabundo y el homenaje a Roberto Bolaño. ¡GRACIAS! Llevo una estadística de los autores que leo y ni encuentro por ningún lado tu fecha de nacimiento y lugar.¿Me las podés dar please? Thankyou, Claudio
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Hola Claudio. Un poco tarde . . . 22 Julio 1956, Pontypool, Gales.
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