Landscape with Beggars
Landscape with Beggars Juan Manuel Roca The good people wonder Why a tattered rabble of beggars Block their prospect of the lilies. If they don’t receive their ration of manna, It’s due to their savage custom… Read More
Epic poetry and canine aficionados
Posting a few pictures as a last offering from my trip to Colombia: The lettering on the banknote displayed in the wall graffiti suggests that a thousand poor die for each 1000 peso banknote in the idle republic… Read More
Of paradise and serpents
I don’t want to give the impression that a reading tour of the Antioquia region of Colombia is a picnic, as there are workshops to be given, schoolchildren to speak to about the arduous apprenticeship and perils to… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- My New British Passport: Made in France, Printed in PolandI never asked for a new passport, but last month I received a demand from the Passport Office to renew my old one. This came as a surprise, since the passport is (was) valid until March 2022, but... Read More
- Contagious Fictions: Love in the Time of CholeraI never fully appreciated Love in the Time of Cholera when it first appeared, back in the 1980s. I was still in thrall to the García Márquez of One Hundred Years of Solitude,and while acknowledging the meticulous skill... Read More
- Contagious Fictions: tracing truths in Saramago’s BlindnessDuring the opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic many of us tuned in every evening to hear the latest statistics of the newly infected and the dead. As the figures mounted, this morbid need to know became a... Read More
- Journal of the Plague Year (iii)Reading over the third set of entries, from May, the events described already appear distant, dreamlike, as though they happened in an adjacent or parallel world. Did Trump really suggest we inject ourselves with detergent? It seems... Read More
- Journal of the Plague Year (ii)Continuing with my journal entries over the first three months of COVID-19, here are two entries for the month of April. During this period the roads around the city were gloriously silent, and many more birds appeared... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
