Richard Blanco — the youngest, first Hispanic, first immigrant and first openly gay man to read at a U.S. president's inauguration — is preparing to read his poetry this Sunday in Atlanta.
The event is set to run from 7-9 p.m. at Temple Sinai, 5645 Dupree Drive NW in Atlanta. Tickets are free, but a $15 donation is recommended. Find tickets here.
The child of Cuban exiles, Blanco often raises questions about cultural identity in his poetry: What is home? Where do I belong? He read his poem “One Today” at President Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in January of 2013 and at the AJC Decatur Book Festival later that same year. The poem’s focus: a nation of diverse but tightly knit people.
"Whether we recognize it or not, the idea is that we don't behave as 'One Today' every day and that we haven't quite figured out how to make that a permanent state," he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about his poem in 2013. "So the idea is the striving for, the hope, the reaching for that ideal, which is the principal ideal of our nation."