Last Tuesday saw the launch in Bogotá of Rómulo Bustos Aguirre’s Collected Poems (1988-2013), La pupila incesante. The event was introduced by another fine Colombian poet, Darío Jaramillo Agudelo. Both poets feature in my forthcoming anthology,… Read More
I find a great Paris Review interview in ‘The Art of Nonfiction’ series from a couple of years ago with Geoff Dyer, who begins by disagreeing with the parameters of his own interview, interrupting the interviewer as follows: INTERVIEWER… Read More
Posted on April 16, 2016 by richardgwyn
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
Posted on July 21, 2013 by richardgwyn
THE QUESTION by Tom Pow How do people live? He was standing two in front of me in W. H. Smith’s and what he wanted to know was, How do people live? He asked the question as if… Read More
At four in the morning there is a noise of riotous celebration from the nearby square, but I cannot be bothered to make it to the balcony to discover its source. Then there is an hour or so… Read More
Posted on February 15, 2012 by richardgwyn
Pedro Serrano points me towards an article in the current New York Review of Books, about William Carlos Williams. In it, Adam Kirsch mentions Williams’ sense – whether it was true or not – of having been… Read More
Posted on February 8, 2012 by richardgwyn
Two weeks ago the Cervantes prize, Spain’s loftiest literary honour, was bestowed on the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra. Parra, at ninety-seven years of age, is without doubt the most influential of living South American poets. His career as… Read More
Posted on December 17, 2011 by richardgwyn
Few things are quite so guaranteed to make me come out in a rash as a BBC Radio 4 poet blathering on in rhyming couplets while I’m attempting to stir the porridge. This morning I almost fell over… Read More
Posted on November 19, 2011 by richardgwyn
All your stories are about yourself, she said, even when they seem to be about other people. I was not going to deny this, nor give her the pleasure of being right. So I quoted Proust, who said that… Read More
Posted on August 9, 2011 by richardgwyn
The birthday card I received from Mrs Blanco this year shows a partly hidden figure reclining in an armchair, cats in attendance, dwarfed by an enormous bookcase that, it is suggested, continues into the vastness of infinity…. Read More
Posted on July 24, 2011 by richardgwyn
There are some books – and some poets – you come to when you are no longer young, but with a sort of recognition, as though they were travelling companions with whom you share a memory or two,… Read More
Posted on July 19, 2011 by richardgwyn
Ricardo Blanco’s BlogRichard Gwyn is the author of Ricardo Blanco's Blog
