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
- Alchemy, alephs and insomnia: origins of The Blue TentThe Blue Tent is released by Parthian as an e-book next Tuesday (20th August). Since the novel has provoked quite a few questions from readers, I thought it might be helpful to publish the text of an email... Read More
- Varieties of Exile: Machado, Benjamin, and an unknown teenager.‘Once near a border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something. Just by being there, the border is an invitation. Come on, it whispers, step across this line. If you... Read More
- The art of lonelinessThe Lonely City is an exquisite meditation on loneliness, but it is also so much more. Laing explores the lives of a handful on American artists who knew loneliness well, and whose work often references that state,... Read More
- Midwinter with HerodotusRyzsard Kapuściński was a Polish writer who spent most of his working life as a roving foreign correspondent for the Polish state news agency (PAP) during the Communist era, but his own writings, in the form of personal... Read More
- Tlön, Uqbar, and the girl in the moonHaving fallen ill on the last day of teaching, the accumulated tensions of the semester finally erupting in an onslaught of snot, fever, and a hideous, raucous cough, I take to my bed in the hope... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
