The poet, translator, narrator, editor and teacher Héctor Carreto, one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Mexico, died this Monday at the age of 70.
The news was announced by the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), institutions where he worked as a poetry workshop leader and teacher in literary creation.
Writers, institutions, publishers and friends have expressed the pain of his departure, among them the narrator Ana Clavel, who in her “X” account wrote: “You leave us the sky constellated with your joyful and wise poetry. A Buddha who played to enjoy and share his super powers as a poet disguised as a simple man.”
In the same social network, the poet Ernesto Lumbreras, highlighted the importance of the poet’s work: “Héctor Carreto stands out in Mexican poetry for the subtle ingenuity of combating the solemnity of the great themes; love, beauty, power or death make a fool of themselves by crossing the threshold of his irony, easy prey in the wake of their disfigurements.
Born on March 18, 1953, in Mexico City, the author was recognized for his collection of poems Coliseo with the National Poetry Prize of Aguascalientes, one of the most important awards of its kind in the country. In addition, he also published the poetry collections Naturaleza Muerta, Efraín Huerta Prize in 1979; The Sword of Saint George, Carlos Pellicer National Poetry Prize for Published Work, 1982; Inhabitant of public parks, Luis Cernuda Poetry Prize from Seville, Spain, in 1991, among others.
Several of his poems were translated into English, French, Italian and Hungarian for various foreign publications. While in Mexico he had an active participation in publications such as Alforja, El Nacional Dominical, El Semanario Cultural, El Sol en la Cultura, La Cultura en México, La Gaceta del FCE, La Jornada Semanal, Periódico de Poesía, Plural, Revista Universidad de Mexico.
As a translator he brought the works of the authors Lêdo Ivo, Fernando Ferreira de Loanda, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago and others into our language. At the same time he made compilations of poets and narrators that appeared in the magazine Tierra Adentro, which were published in two volumes; an anthology by the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, published in 1997; Validity of the epigram, launched in 2006, which refers to one of the types of poetry that he himself practiced with great skill.
His collected poetry appears in the collection “Poems and Essays” from UNAM, titled Portable Poetry (1979-2006); Still in recent years she released two books: All Time Past Was Better, 2019, and The Black Cat Constellation (2021).