Poet Richard Blanco to Headline Children's Poetry Festival,February 22

The Westwood Public Library will host acclaimed Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco in the culminating event of the Westwood Children’s Poetry Festival, February 20-22, 2024.The headliner reading/Q &A at 1:30 PM, Thursday February 22, is jointly funded by the Westwood Public Library and a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, written by Westwood Poet Laureate Lynne Viti and Youth Poet Laureate Lucie Sechler as part of their mission to bring poetry to elementary school aged students.

Raised in Miami by Cuban immigrant parents, Blanco was the youngest poet to read at a U.S. presidential inauguration in January 2013, at the invitation of President Obama. Currently an associate professor of English at Florida International University, he is familiar to Boston area radio listeners as a regular contributor to WGBH FM’s “Boston Public Radio” with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. He is the Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets, an active member of The Center for Humanities in an Urban Environment and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Blanco’s poetry collections include: City of a Hundred Fires; Directions to The Beach of the Dead; Boundaries; Looking for The Gulf Motel; How to Love a Country; and the recently released Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems. He has also authored two memoirs, For All of Us, One Today and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood.

The Festival will feature three days of poetry readings by several Massachusetts poets, arts, crafts and music, activities tied to poetry, and mini-workshops in creative writing. In the culminating event, Richard Blanco will speak about his growing up time in Miami as the bilingual child of immigrant parents, recite poems appropriate for his young audience, including the illustrated edition of One Today and participate in an informal Q & A.

The Festival is the brainchild of Viti, Sechler, and Westwood Library Director Elizabeth McGovern, who collaborated on the successful grant application to the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Registration for the programs on February 20 and 21 at the Westwood Library and for Blanco’s reading, Q & A and book signing on February 22 will begin on the library website, https://www.westwoodlibrary.org/ in mid-January.

For more information about Richard Blanco, see the “About” section on his website, https://richard-blanco.com/bio/