EILEEN MYLES is probably America's best-known unofficial 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."
Eileen arrived in New York after college, (U. Mass. (Boston)) gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitue 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. She's published more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti including Hell (an opera with composer Michael Webster, 2004) Skies, (2001), on my way, (2001), Cool for You, (a novel, 2000), School of Fish, (1997), Maxfield Parrish, (1995), Not Me, (1991), and Chelsea Girls, (stories, 1994). In 1995, with Liz Kotz, she edited The New Fuck You/adventures in Lesbian Reading (Semiotext(e).
In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. In the 80s she was Artistic Director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. In '97 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, has written catalogue essays about Sadie Benning, Peggy Awesh and Nicole Eisenman and an archive of her weekly blog on art can be found at at http://openfordesign.msn.com/
