Poet, civil engineer, teacher, and memoirist Richard Blanco was born in Madrid, Spain to Cuban parents, exiled from their county. Only 45 days after Blanco’s birth, his family emigrated to the United States. Blanco was raised and educated in Miami, Florida.
Blanco was a child that excelled in both the arts and sciences. The form of art he loved was poetry, but his parents encouraged him to make use of his scientific talents, as they wanted him to have a prosperous future.
Blanco followed the advice of his parents and obtained a degree in engineering from Florida International University in 1991. Although Blanco worked as a civil engineer after college, his passion for poetry did not fade, as he pondered over questions about his culture and identity. Poetry was a way to explore the questions in depth.
Blanco went back to Florida International University and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, under the mentorship of poet Campbell McGrath.
Blanco first poetry book, City of a Hundred Fires, was a testament to this inner struggle on identity, as he detailed his first visit to Cuba. This book won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry. Blanco went on to travel to many countries, including Spain, Italy, France, Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, and New England, studying the idea of belonging.
In 2013, President Barack Obama selected Blanco to be an inaugural poet. Blanco was the youngest, first gay, Latino, and immigrant poet to take on the role. Blanco wrote the poem “One Today” and read it at the 2013 inauguration. The poem tells the audience that although we are all walking different paths with different responsibilities, we all interconnected: breathing the same air, walking on the same ground, and living under one sky.