Far South, foul weather
In the south of Chile, early September means late winter, and the weather is cold and damp. This comes as a shock to the system, if your body still thinks it’s summer. Driving from the airport into Valdivia,… 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
The Pig of Babel
Saltillo has proved the most hospitable and generous city I have visited in Mexico. It seems to be filled with people who love books and actually read them, in spite of being the centre for Mexico’s automobile… Read More
Crossing Patagonia
Writers Chain tour of Argentina & Chile, continued: After three days of readings, lectures and tea parties in Puerto Madryn, Gaiman and Trelew, yesterday we made the long trip across the Patagonian meseta to Trevelin, in the foothills… Read More
Forgetting Chatwin
Day five of the Wales Writers Chain tour of Argentina and Chile. We began in Buenos Aires on Monday, at the Spanish Cultural Centre, where Mererid Hopwood and I gave lectures on, respectively, the Welsh and English literary… Read More
Dissolving
It’s always an education to read in unusual locations. The organizers of FILBA appear to be steering me towards a socially engaged role that I am not normally associated with back in the UK. But that’s fine… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- Ernesto Cardenal (1925-2020): two poems in translationErnesto Cardenal died on Sunday, March 1st, Saint David’s Day. Born into a privileged Nicaraguan family, Cardenal resisted tyrants and dictatorships throughout his life. He died bitterly opposed to the Ortega government in Nicaragua, that betrayal of... Read More
- A tsunami of starlingsI have written about this before. Driving from Palau to Castelló, across the Aiguamolls, a tsunami of starlings unfurls in the sky, and I am encompassed by their path. They wheel and return, settle in a paddock behind... Read More
- Damnable Brexit“This may be the last stage of imperialism – having appropriated everything else from its colonies, the dead empire appropriates the pain of those it has oppressed.” Fintan O’Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain Ricardo... Read More
- OaxacaWhat does Oaxaca hold in store for me? According to Mesoamerican tradition, which pays homage to Ometeotl, God of Duality, paradise has already been granted to the human race, but to accede to it personal effort is required.... Read More
- A thousand spidersIt was not that I knew her particularly well, but she knew my wife, and found it opportune to tell me, or wanted to tell someone, which is more or less the same thing, but maybe not. In any... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
