Poems for staying at home (Day 13)
Today’s poem concerns a house, any house – though this one happens to be in Mexico – in which someone is born, but no longer lives. We all have a house to which we return in… Read More
Ten ground rules for microfiction
Since I am currently teaching a course on microfiction, that weird mutating gene/genre that swerves and sways between the prose poem and the short story, I thought I would post a translation of some points made by Andrés… Read More
Leaving the Atocha Station and the personality of the translator
Someone bought me, or recommended that I buy – I forget precisely – Ben Lerner’s novel Leaving the Atocha Station, and it’s been a long time since I laughed so much while reading any book; so thanks, whoever… Read More
Reasons for his Absence
Reasons for his Absence by Darío Jaramillo Agudelo (Colombia) If anyone asks after him, tell them that perhaps he’ll never come back, or else on returning no one will recognise his face; tell them also that he… Read More
No ideas but in things
Since I began teaching creative writing, some fifteen years ago, I have become accustomed to the sad refrain from younger writers that although they fervently wish to write – or perhaps ‘become a writer’, which may or may… Read More
More notes on being a foreigner (I)
Staying for any extended period of time in a country where one is obliged to speak a language other than one’s own inevitably results in reflection about core identity. Core identity, if there is such a thing, presumes… Read More
Life as an act of translation
Many and varied are the approaches to translation, and numerous its unsought consequences. There are those who become obsessed by the process even at the cost of progressing to the end of a piece of work. It doesn’t… Read More
An inexplicable addiction
A joy to find this passage in the Freelance slot of last week’s TLS, written by the wonderful Lydia Davis: “In spite of having translated during most of my life, I still don’t really understand the urge. Why… Read More
Poets who translate
It is our last day in Istanbul, and the rain continues, as it has done since Friday evening, shrouding the Bosphorous in grey mist. Before catching a taxi to the airport we snatch a visit to Aghia… Read More
Two poems by Claribel Alegría
Claribel Alegría, who was born in Nicaragua in 1924, but raised in El Salvador, beginning a life of exile that included Chile, Mexico, Paris and the island of Mallorca, is a poet heavily influenced by the revolutionary struggles… Read More
On Translation
An email from my Chinese translator in quite extraordinary English reminded me of the following article, brought to my attention by my friend Hugo Pooley last year. It is the report of a corrida that appeared in the… 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 