Cwm Banw and the myth of core identity
Deep into autumn, with the rich russet or burnt sienna of the ferns, and the grass still so green, with streaks of cloud racing up the valley to our left and, as the mist thickens, an overlay of… Read More
Capel-y-Ffin and the many worlds interpretation
Although the name Capel-y-Ffin is often associated with the idiosyncratic Catholicism of Eric Gill and David Jones (and I will return to them in another post), the hamlet is also home to both a small Anglican church and… Read More
A Greek taverna filled with maps
What is a map, other than the unfolding and laying out of the territory — more accurately, a representation of the territory — through which a person may wish to travel? Rather than indicating merely a physical space… Read More
Borges and the Multiverse
There are few ideas more mind-blowing than that of the multiverse, and the notion that the universe is perpetually dividing into parallel universes, each of them containing versions of ourselves. Long before I’d ever heard of the multiverse,… Read More
Banff journal: on Jaramillo, Borges, and living between languages
After a long day that a resourceful weather-forecaster might summarise as wet and irritating, my attention depleted by sleeplessness – mood, to continue the meteorological analogy, middling to crabby – I am due to give a presentation on… Read More
Fiction Fiesta 2015
PREVIEW | FICTION FIESTA 2015 Fiction Fiesta started out three years ago as a conversation in a pub between myself and Nick Davidson, landlord of the now defunct Promised Land in Windsor Place, Cardiff. I was expecting a… Read More
Juan Rulfo and the terror of the blank page
Juan Rulfo and accomplice. This morning, after a restless night, I spent a couple of hours picking up books from the shelves around my room, almost at random, dipping into them, dropping them on the floor, where… Read More
The chattering mind
The modern novel obsesses about itself. For many writers of novels, and of short stories, the act of narration itself becomes the topic of storytelling. I was culpable of this myself in my first foray into novel-writing,… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- Returning to animism in the AnthropoceneSometimes a book comes along that enhances your way of being in the world: for two such books to fall into your hands, in serendipitous collusion, is a thing to marvel at, and perhaps even to write about.... Read More
- Cwm Banw and the Clowde of UnknowyngThere are days when mist covers the Welsh lowlands, all the way from the Canolbarth to the Severn estuary, and yet at around 300 metres above sea level you emerge into bright sunshine, and into a world unimagined... Read More
- Cwm Banw and the myth of core identityDeep into autumn, with the rich russet or burnt sienna of the ferns, and the grass still so green, with streaks of cloud racing up the valley to our left and, as the mist thickens, an overlay of... Read More
- The configuration of confusionI came to consciousness the other morning from a waking dream in which I had woken (in my dream) into an unfamiliar world, surrounded by strangers in a kind of ante-room, with thick velvet curtains and a single... Read More
- A day in the high PyreneesAutumn on its way, the equinox a week off, we head inland, to Setcases, and up towards the great bulk of Gra de Fajol, an angry giant guarding the head of the Ter valley. Ulldeter means Eye of... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
Ricardo Blanco's Blog 