In April 2022, Richard Blanco was appointed as the Inaugural Poet Laureate by Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, cultural identity characterizes his many collections of award-winning poetry, including his most recent, How to Love a Country, and his memoir The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Richard is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, has received numerous honorary doctorates, serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University.
Projects:
Light of Our Light
At Mayor Daniella Levine Cava's 2023 State of the County event, Richard Blanco read his original poem, Light of Our Light.
On the occasion of the State of the County Address
by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, January 25, 2023
Our light is not just the light of our sun rising like a gold doubloon. Our light is
also the light of all our golden faces rising to face the sun every morning.
We're parents waking up their children, school bus drivers delivering them to
their futures, and teachers ready at their desks with lesson plans for life.
We're nurses, doctors, and first responders driving back home after saving
lives all night.
We're grocers stocking shelves for us, and hoteliers offering tourists coffee
with a warm a smile.
We're postal workers sorting mail from loved ones, and truckers carrying
everything we ask for.
each other, as we inch along our rush-hour highways, while the sun inches
into our sky.
Our light is not just the blare of our noontime. Our light is also the blare of our
laughter and our tastebuds at lunchtime.
We're flakey Cuban pastelitos and Puerto Rican pasteles. We're the spiciness
of Mexican burritos and Jamaican patties.
We're Midwestern corn-on-the-cob, and the corn of gooey arepas from
Venezuela. We're Brazil's creamy pão de queijo, and Southern barbeque.
We're ladles of Columbina sancocho and warm matzah ball soup. We're
pupusas bursting from El Salvador, and Hati's platefuls of griot with pikliz
memory and longing. Let us never forget: to break the bread of our all our
past losses and all our current dreams
at the table of our city, together.
Our light is not just the moon shimmering quietly over our ocean. Our light is
also the light of all our voices singing a common love for the moon with
the music of our many languages: laline, a lua, la luna— whose light we
dance to with our many rhythms.
We're the sway-sway of salsa and merengue, the swagger of reggae. We're
calypso drums pinging and cumbia skirts whirling. We're the shuffle of
samba and the clonk of country two-step.
We are all of us—let us keep listening to the songs of each other's voices,
learning each other's dances.
Let us always look to the sky—see ourselves as a constellation—each of us a
unique star, but connected, together mapping a story greater than
ourselves, for ages to come.
