José Emilio Pacheco Berny (30 June 1939 – 26 January 2014) was a Mexican poet, essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century. The Berlin International Literature Festival has praised him as "one of the most significant contemporary Latin American poets". In 2009 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize for his literary oeuvre.
He taught at UNAM, as well as the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Essex, and many others in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
He died aged 74 in 2014 after suffering a cardiac arrest.
He was awarded the following prizes: Premio Cervantes 2009, Reina Sofía Award (2009), Federico García Lorca Award (2005), Octavio Paz Award (2003), Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award (2004), Ramón López Velarde Award (2003), Alfonso Reyes International Prize (2004), José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature (2000), National José Asunción Silva Poetry Award (1996), and Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Struga, Macedonia. He was elected by unanimous acclaim to the Mexican Academy (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua) on 28 March 2006. He was a member of The National College (El Colegio Nacional) since 1986.
Los elementos de la noche (1963)
No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiempo (1970)
Selected Poems, ed. George McWhirter (1987, in English)
City of Memory and Other Poems, trans. David Lauer, Cynthia Steele (1997, in English)
Tarde o temprano: Poemas 1958-2009 (2009, Complete Poetry)
La edad de las tinieblas (2009)
El viento distante y otros relatos (1963)
El principio del placer (1972)
Las batallas en el desierto (1981)
Battles in the Desert & Other Stories, trans. Katherine Silver (1987, in English)
Modern Spanish American poets. Second series / María Antonia Salgado, 2004
José Emilio Pacheco and the poets of the shadows / Ronald J Friis, 2001
Out of the volcano: portraits of contemporary Mexican artists / Margaret Sayers Peden, 1991
Tradition and renewal: essays on twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture / Merlin H Forster, 1975