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Richard Pacheco is an award winning playwright, poet, artist, journalist, filmmaker, actor and educator. His play “Happily Ever After” was given an honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest script competition. He is a SAG-AFTRA actor and also performs onstage. He was a finalist in the grant competition in playwrighting for the Massachusetts Artists Foundation (1976) and recipient of an ARTA (American Regional Theatre Award) best new play award in 1986.
His plays have received staged readings and performances at Playwright’s Platform, Culture Park and other venues. He was mentored in poetry by Daisy Alden and George W. Hayden, two Pulitzer Prize nominees. He was a finalist in the Boston Theatre Marathon several times.. He has acted in over 30 plays and acts in film and television as well. He holds a BFA in painting and an MFA in art education/printmaking from U. Mass. Dartmouth.
He wrote for the New Bedford Standard-Times for 23 years as arts writer of features and critiques on dance, drama, music an the visual arts. He was the only freelance writer to write investigative journalism for them in their entire history since 1850.
The city of New Bedford recognized his contributions to the arts with a special award.
He taught for 33 years in the New Bedford public school system, teaching everything from general art, to pottery, crafts, printmaking, sculpture, photography, computer graphics and web design. He was a single parent of three children, Joel, Jennifer, and Jonathan.
Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite
The world of Richard Pacheco’s Perspectives is dark and compelling, much like a thriller movie where we squint to dim our vision rather than expose ourselves to the full impact of the scenes we know will come. The 20 poems in this collection are lean, unflinching, and unforgettable. Poets have long been fascinated by the ‘dark side’ of life and the human psyche. As with many other distinguished poets before him, Pacheco’s mastery lies in knowing just where and how to let in a ray of light for maximum effect. Although bleak, the world view of Perspectives manages always to leave space for the possibility of a reprieve from darkness - even if we, the readers, are afraid of the dark, Pacheco’s perspective is punctuated with timely reminders that light is always present, just beyond the horizon. From ‘Bite the Bullet’: I can sit tranquil as a summer flower/seeking the later afternoon sun/leaning in the right direction/until the day is done.
Pacheco valiantly faces off against the inevitability of death. From ‘Suicide’: do not propose false hopes/only in the movies/does help arrive in the nick of time/the slow ooze of life succeeds/the senses succumb/the eyes weary, grow bloated with death’s grip. In the end, it is a comfort to know that he is willing to go before us - to open doors to the scary places and shed some light in forbidding corners before we enter. Richard Pacheco’s uncompromising Perspectives is a deeply engaging, ‘can’t look away’ volume of contemporary poetry.
