Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles (born 1949, Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American poet. Her latest book is Sorry, Tree in which she describes "some nature" as well as the transmigration of souls from the east coast to the west. 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 females forming their own literary avant garde."

Early life

Eileen arrived in New York after college at University of Massachusetts Boston, gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitué of the household of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan's East Village, giving her first reading at CBGB's in 1974. A virtuoso performer of her work - she's read and performed at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across North America as well as in Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Russia.

Professional life

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. In 1997 and again in 2007 Eileen toured with Sister Spit, a post-punk female performance troupe. She has been a professor of writing at UCSD since 2002. In 2007 she received the Andy Warhol Creative Capital art writing fellowship. She contributes to a wide number of publication including Bookforum, the Believer, and lately Cabinet. She has written catalogue essays about Sadie Benning, Peggy Ahwesh and Nicole Eisenman.

Upcoming Projects

Eileen Myles in 2006 at the Brooklyn Book Festival.Eileen Myles's The Importance of Being Iceland — to be published by Semiotext(e)/MIT in fall of 2009 — is an eclectic assemblage of writings, the title essay offering an account of trips to Reykjavik in 1996 and 2007 to explore Icelandic art, culture, politics, and poetry. The volume also includes a series of studies on female artists, including Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Peggy Ahwesh, as well as a few men: Jack Pierson, Steven Spielberg, James Schuyler, William Pope.L, and Robert Smithson. The Importance of Being Iceland will be the first full volume of her art writing