A Conversation with Richard Blanco, National Humanities Medal Recipient
Continuing Letras Latinas’ yearlong 20th anniversary series, in October 2024 Notre Dame welcomed visiting poets Richard Blanco and Rigoberto González. Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology was released in September 2024, and was edited by Rigoberto González, and includes the work of Richard Blanco.
Richard was introduced by his longtime friend, special guest and fellow Miami poet Emma Trelles. Earlier in the day, Emma sat down with Richard for an oral history conversation. Listen in as they discuss the unexpected role of ambition in the creative process, how language can be a way of breathing in the world, and his continuous search for relevance as an elder in the poetry community.
Experience the Episode
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Wednesday, November 27, 2024 12:00 pm
Continuing Letras Latinas’ yearlong 20th anniversary series, in October 2024 Notre Dame welcomed visiting poets Richard Blanco and Rigoberto González. Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology was released in September 2024, and was edited by Rigoberto González, and includes the work of Richard Blanco.
Richard was introduced by his longtime friend, special guest and fellow Miami poet Emma Trelles. Earlier in the day, Emma sat down with Richard for an oral history conversation. Listen in as they discuss the unexpected role of ambition in the creative process, how language can be a way of breathing in the world, and his continuous search for relevance as an elder in the poetry community.
For more information, please visit the Letras Latinas website.
Enjoy this bonus Letras Latinas recording of an oral history conversation with Richard Blanco, interviewed by Letras Latinas director Francisco Aragón from 2007, six years before Richard served as the nation’s fifth-ever inaugural poet for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration in January 2013.
Editor’s note: There were technical difficulties during this recording that affect the sound quality. We hope you enjoy the conversation nonetheless.
Meet the Poet: Richard Blanco
Richard Blanco was selected by President Barack Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Joseph Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems. He has also authored the memoirs for All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey, and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for the The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University. In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.
Meet the Poet: Emma Trelles
Emma Trelles is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her current manuscript Courage and the Clock was a finalist for the 2026 Louise Bogan Award for poetry and shortlisted for the 2025 Donald Hall Prize. She is the ninth Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California, and the recipient of an Established Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council and a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. A graduate CantoMundo Fellow, her translations were longlisted in the Best Literary Translations 2027 anthology, and her work recently appears in Poetry International; New England Review; Poetry; and the Academy’s Poem-A-Day series. She is series editor of the Alta California Chapbook Prize, open to Latine poets in the U.S. and published in bilingual editions by Gunpowder Press. emmatrelles.com