Bookworm festival opens with 'Obama's poet' in Beijing

Richard Blanco is one of the highlighted authors at the opening night of the Bookworm festival in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily

Hours after his plane landed in Beijing on Friday, Richard Blanco was reading three of his poems at the city's Bookworm store.

In his first public appearance in China, the poet, who read at a United States presidential inauguration, spoke to his audience of 200 about home, sense of belonging and traveling.

"It's all of us as human beings that have to belong to something, some place ..." Blanco said. "I'd like to share my perfect place with you (with a poem)."

On Saturday, Blanco shared with readers the same poem, One Today, which he had read at Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony in 2013. The now-famous poet was trained as a civil engineer and is a child of immigrants. Blanco, who grew up in Miami, describes himself as "made in Cuba, assembled in Spain".

Born in 1968, he is the youngest and first Latino poet selected to read at US presidential inaugurations, in a tradition that follows great poets such as Robert Frost.

Though some wonder if Obama's choice was for political reasons, Peter Armenti, a literary specialist with the Library of Congress has hailed Blanco's poem as "a celebration of the shared American experience", grasping moments across the United States in one day with its nine stanzas.

Blanco's poems also ring a bell among his Beijing audience that was a combination of expat and local literature lovers.

"When you travel, as I am here, traveling really brings us into thinking about something, ... and about the effort of always trying to find a paradise."