At the Limit

Chus Pato was born in 1955 in Ourense, Galicia (north-west Spain). All of her work is written in Galician, a language which is closely related to both Spanish and Portuguese. She teaches History and Geography at a high school in the interior of Galicia. In her words: "writing metabolizes the world, even that world that cannot be absorbed into writing." And: "I have a predilection for those constructions which investigate the possibility of a language-thinking that refuses to repeat the already-written and lives in contact-lamination with the seams of the unsayable, of what hasn't yet been written into the corporeality of the poem." "To me, the poem is a freedom-machine." "My autobiography? It does not always seem to be mine; sometimes I would rather have other lives. Insofar as all autobiography participates in fiction, I prefer not to be forced to choose, so I opt not to have one." Her work: 'Urania' (Calpurnia, Ourense, 1991), 'Heloísa' (Espiral Maior, A Coruña, 1994), Fascinio ('Toxosoutos', Santiago de Compostela, 1995), 'Nínive', (Xerais, Vigo, 1996), 'A ponte das poldras' (Noitarenga, Santiago de Compostela, 1996), 'm-Talá', (Xerais, Vigo, 2000), 'Charenton' (Xerais, Vigo, 2003), and a selection translated into Spanish by Irís Cochón: 'Un Ganges de palabras' (Puerta del Mar, Málaga, 2003). Politically engaged, Chus Pato is a member of Redes escarlata, a leftist cultural group that supports independence, as well as PEN Galicia.