Bio Antón Riveiro Coello

ntón Riveiro Coello A BIOGRAPHY Antón Riveiro Coello was born in Xinzo de Limia (province of Ourense) in 1964. He studied Law in Santiago and presently resides en Boiro (A Coruña), where he works as a civil servant for the Galician government. He is president of the Asociación Cultural Barbantia, Favorite Son of the Town of Baltar, as well as Honorary Judge of the Couto Mixto. He has been awarded and recognized in a great number of contests such as Álvaro Cunqueiro de Narrativa, Manuel García Barros de novella, Café Dublín de Narrativa, Torrente Ballester (Finalist), Pedrón de Ouro, Manuel Murguía, Camilo José Cela, Breogán de Cuentos and Castelao de Narrativa, as well as some International prizes such as the Max Aub and the NH*** de Relatos. His books include; Valquiria (1994), Parque Central e outros relatos (1996) A historia de Chicho Antela (1997), A quinta de Saler (1999), Animalia (1999), As rulas de Bakunin (2000, translated to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), Homónima (2001), Carpeta do Barbanza, Viaxe polo cadrante das sereas (2002), A canción de Sálvora (20030 A esfinxe de amaranto (2003), Limaiaé (2005), Casas Baratas (2005), A voz do lago (2007), Os ollos de K (2007) and As pantasmas de auga (2010). AUTOPOETIC The most difficult thing in the world—Ciorán says—is to talk about yourself without exasperating others. A confession can only be tolerated if the author disguises himself as a poor devil, and here is the point of departure, a poor devil born on the 22 of August of the year 1964, in an explosion of flesh and great hope. An animal! As never seen before! You should revere me everyday just for the pain you have caused me! Mother never missed the opportunity to throw in my face my reluctance to exit. She likes to relive the pain of those two intense days in August, hot and tragic, when the forceps, and her irascible push, flung me into the world, weighing in at a bit more than 5 kilos on the Santa Christina hospital scale. That was something that would never end! I calculate her pain and justify so much suffering with the fame I would later attain of the good-natured baby—it seems that I spent the hours sleeping with such abandon that I never gave up this lethargy, not even to eat. Having just cut your lifeline, a nurse washed you and then wandered the hospital halls cradling and raising up into the air this ball of flesh as if she were carrying the palpable proof of a miracle. Daddy smiles, vain, takes me with his iron hands and after confirming the weight concentrates all his enthusiasm on the phrase that with the passing years became legendary in the family: A son was born to me already young! (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005) I spent my first two years in the Xinzo jail because my father was the municipal guard in charge of holding prisoners in custody. From those years, incredible as it seems, I remember something that must have happened soon after I learned to walk. With a magical ability and an incredible amazement of details, I invoke not only the happy faces of those grandiose heads, but also the spacious image of the room, the tiresome light coming through the two windows, the bare stone of the wall and the creaking of the wood inflicting a mysterious voice on the Bigheads in the Town Hall, those monsters that leave an impression of their extended happiness on the blackboard of my memory. (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005) When I was almost three, we moved to a territory that, in time, would become my essential homeland, where I was raised until the age of fifteen: the Casas Baratas=. I stop at the highest point of this domestic forest, familiar, where our imagination involved wolves and imaginary monsters that fell upon us at night with feline habits. And from here I look for the skyline of my small native country: the Casas Baratas, surrounded now by an urban expansion that is incapable of erasing those two enormous stone landmarks that appear to have enameled the sky in the blue of its small tiles. Still, the construction imposes a footprint of the modern world over the humid plains that are always subject to the geometric sight of the medieval towers, their historical pride wounded by these social buildings, by these two blocks, five halls, fifty homes, almost = Casas Baratas (Cheap Houses)- public/social housing given to those in need during the 50’s in Spain. two hundred neighbors: a world in itself. They look, still, like two stone boats stranded on the legendary edge of the Antela lagoon, bow pointing south, and a wind of solitude in their urban conception. (from “Neve”. Casas Baratas, 2005) In the middle of all this, there is a field full of vanished memories in the Salesian boarding schools in Cambados, León, and Ourense, where my biggest passion, my euphoria for music and for the guitar only stands out. Yes, no less than Richie Blackmore, the musician I strived to be like, and which had become my most devoted vocation, and the same time the most frustrated. Because I wasn’t content to just simply be a famous rock guitarist, but in my dreams I aspired to rub up against this London artist’s talent. I never wanted anything with such passion, and I do not lie when I say that today the Nobel for literature wouldn’t have as much value to me as acquiring, at that moment, this musician’s mastery. In his hands, the guitar became not only a musical instrument, but a poetic expression as well. I tried and tried with a moving insistence in that old guitar with an open bridge, and therefore the strings too far away from the frets (which made the pulsation a painful and bloody act of callousness). I barely achieved a pathetic imitation of Child in Time or Mistreat. At first I thought it was the guitar’s fault. But when I got an electric one in my hands, a Stratocaster imitation, I knew that it had nothing to do with practice or education, but with talent, a type of technique and vision that imposes itself upon the destiny and will of certain people. (from “Mister López & Friend”. Casas Baratas. 2005) When they opened the Xinzo High School, on the eve in which Tejero gave his pathetic coup d’état, I founded the rock band Sacho with three friends: …here founded is an excessive word which would rather be changed to assembled, if I refer to the physical aspect our concerts had, before, during, and after which we worked hard. I can’t forget the thrill with which we packed that old Land Rover up to the top with the baffles, the sound board, and the tangle of cables that put us in a jam as we unwound them. The gigs were in discotheques—we didn’t want to do it outside and give away our equipments’ lack of wattage—and our set was quite varied, ranging from our own original songs, lyrics that perhaps already hid my literary calling, to versions of Santana, Scorpions, Police, and because of course, Deep Purple. We also included the Ayatola! by Siniestro Total, which caused a certain enthusiasm among the unconditional (mostly h not very demanding family and friends with ears more than an ear) and that we always played, except on the day of our premiere. On that occasion, apart from the Town authorities, our parents also attended, and Robert, the drummer, backed out completely because of the terrifying respect he had for his father. I remember him livid, sweating, his drumsticks whimsically tucked in between his legs, mumbling his refusal among the nearby hammering applause to debut a song that would make his father clench his teeth due to the pornographic charge of the lyrics. (from “Mister López & Friend”. Casas Baratas. 2005). After the COU1 and SAT, I did what a lot of people did who are unclear about things: I majored in Law. And although the first three years did not go badly, I dropped out in exactly the fifth year when I met my life partner who is most at fault for me ending up devoting myself to writing. As a State worker and later an employee for the Galician Government, I started entering literary competitions and from there I began to create a kind of solitary workshop in which I learned that there are many things one can capture with words. Of course, I am a huge music lover (my rock star career ended the day my companion fell asleep while I played her a lovely song composed just for her), a lover of literature (Cunqueiro, Faulkner, Nabókov, Sándor Márai, Stefan Zweig, Julien Gracq...), of film (Wim Wenders, Akira Kurosawa, Herzog, Fritz Lang...). Currently, I live in Boir,o where I participate in a beautiful project called Barbantia, which attempts to elevate the culture in the region of Barbanza. Otherwise, I keep on writing, with passion, building castles in the air so that others can inhabit them. CURRENT GALICIAN LITERATURE AND GALICIAN FICTION IN PARTICULAR In spite of the never ending process of making the language official, which never fails to bring us bad news, we live in a time of excellent quality literature. To the army of poets who have always blossomed in a country as small as ours, we have to celebrate the huge group of fiction writers that, along with other already consolidated careers, went on to add and achieve some of the biggest objectives that our fiction had, like the revision of theme and form, and re-elaborating and updating old myths.

Load more