Eileen Myles (born 1949, Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American poet who has also worked in fiction, non-fiction, and theater. Bust Magazine calls Myles "the rock star of modern poetry" and Holland Cotter in The New York Times describes her as "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk female writer-performers." Of her poetry book Sorry, Tree, Chicago Review says: “Her politics are overt, her physicality raw, yet it is the subtle gentle noticing in her poems that overwhelms.”
Eileen Myles grew up and attended Catholic schools in Arlington, Massachusettsand graduated from U. Mass in 1971. Arriving in New York in1974, Myles gave her first reading at CBGB and attended workshops at [[St.Mark’s Poetry Project]] studying with Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, andJim Brodey. She worked as assistant to poet James Schuyler, met [[AllenGinsberg]] at the Nuyorican Poets Café and generally “lived punkily onthe streets” as part of the poetry and queer art scene that animatedManhattan's East Village. Her first performances and theater pieces(Joan of Arc: a spiritual entertainment,Patriarchy, a play, FeelingBlue Pts. 1, 2 7 3 and Modern Art and Our Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz)at the Poetry Project, P.S. 122 and The WOW Café. Over the years she’sbecome a virtuoso performer of her work——she's read and performed atcolleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across North America aswell as in Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Russia.
In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for the President of the United States. In the 1980s she was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project[1]. In 1997 and again in 2007 Eileen toured with Sister Spit, a post-punk female performance troupe. She’s now a Professor Emeritus of Writing & Literature at UCSD where she taught from 2002-2007. She teaches in the summer at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO and is the Hugo Writer at University of Montana for the spring of 2010. She contributes to a wide number of publications most recently Parkett, aNother Magazine, the Believer, H.O.W journal and this year’s Provincetown Arts. She’s blogged on Harriet for the summer of 2009. She lives in New York.
Eileen Myles's The Importance of Being Iceland...published by Semiotext / the MIT Press in July 2009...is an eclectic assemblage of writings, the title essay offering an account of trips to Reykjavik in 1996 and 2007 to explore Icelandic poetry, art and queer identity globally. The volume also includes a series of conversations and essays about artists, including Daniel Day Lewis, Wakefield Poole, Ntozake Shange and Robert Smithson. The Importance of Being Iceland is the first full volume of her essays and art writing.
Among her works are poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti including: Hell (an opera with composer Michael Webster). In 1995, with Liz Kotz, she edited The New Fuck You/adventures in Lesbian Reading.Additional works include:
The Irony of the Leash. Jim Brodey Books, 1978.
Polar Ode (with Anne Waldman). New York: Dead Duke Books, 1979.
A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains. New York: Power Mad Press, 1981. ASIN B0013BI3CM
Sappho's Boat. Los Angeles: Little Caesar, 1982. ASIN B000KW4H9I
Bread and Water (stories). New York: Hanuman Books, 1986. ISBN 978-0937815021
1969 (fiction). New York: Hanuman Books, 1989. ISBN 978-0937815250
Not Me. New York: Semiotext, 1991. ISBN 9780936756677
Chelsea Girls (fiction). ISBN 0876859325 Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1994.
Maxfield Parrish: Early and New Poems, ISBN 9780876859766 Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1995.
The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (co-edited with Liz Kotz). ISBN 1570270570 New York: Semiotext, MIT Press, 1995.
School of Fish, ISBN 157423031X Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1997.
Cool for You (novel). ISBN 188712859X New York: Soft Skull Press, 2000.
Skies: Poems, ISBN 157423174X Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press , 2001.
On My Way, ISBN 0971037132 Cambridge, MA: Faux Press, 2001.
Tow (with drawings by artist Larry C. Collins), New York: Lospeccio Press, 2005.
Sorry, Tree (poems). ISBN 978-1933517209 2007, Wave Books.
The Importance of Being Iceland (art writing). ISBN 978-1584350668 New York: Semiotext, MIT Press, 2009.
