Alberto Blanco

Alberto Blanco is one of Mexico’s foremost poets.  Among his more than twelve books of poetry are three in the Colección Letras Mexicanas series issued by Fondo De Cultura Económica, Mexico’s preeminent publishing house: Giros de faros (1979), El corazón del instante (1998), and La hora y la neblina (2005).  His poetry has been translated into thirteen languages. Dawn of the Senses  (City Lights, Pocket Poets series, 1995), edited by Juvenal Acosta, is a bilingual anthology of his poetry, with translations into English by W. S. Merwin and others; a second bilingual anthology of his work, A Cage of Transparent Words, edited by Paul B. Roth, was published by Bitter Oleander Press in 2007.   Moreover, Mr. Blanco himself is a well-respected translator of the work of writers as diverse as  Merwin, Emily Dickinson, Allen Ginsberg, and Bertolt Brecht, to name a few.  He has also written children’s books and many noteworthy essays on the visual arts and various artists.  He is an artist himself, and his paintings have been exhibited at national galleries and eight of his books of poems have been illustrated with his own collages and other graphic works.

Mr. Blanco has given many readings of his works and lectured extensively and has held several academic appointments in the United States: he was an assistant professor at the University of Texas, El Paso (1993-96) and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at San Diego State University in 1998 and 1999, and he held the Knapp Chair at the University of California, San Diego,  in 2007. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, in 1991.  In Mexico he has been honored with Fellowships from the Centro Mexiano de Escritores (1977), INBA (1980), FNCA (1990), and the Fideicomiso para la Cultura (1992).  In 1994 and 2001, he was a Fellow of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores.

He holds degrees from the Universidad Nacional Autónima México, Universidad Ibero Americana, and El Colegio de México.