Eileen Myles (they/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has made them one of the most recognized writers of their generation. 

Listen to one of Myles's poems, 'Peanut Butter' here. (Timestamp: 29:02)

"I am always hungry
& wanting to have
sex. This is a fact.
If you get right
down to it the new
unprocessed peanut
butter is no damn
good & you should
buy it in a jar as
always in the
largest supermarket
you know. And
I am an enemy
of change, as
you know. All
the things I
embrace as new
are in
fact old things,
re-released: swimming,
the sensation of
being dirty in
body and mind
summer as a
time to do
nothing and make
no money. Prayer
as a last re-
sort. Pleasure
as a means,
and then a
means again
with no ends
in sight. I am
absolutely in opposition
to all kinds of
goals. I have
no desire to know
where this, anything
is getting me.
When the water
boils I get
a cup of tea.
Accidentally I
read all the
works of Proust.
It was summer
I was there
so was he. I
write because
I would like
to be used for
years after
my death. Not
only my body
will be compost
but the thoughts
I left during
my life. During
my life I was
a woman with
hazel eyes. Out
the window
is a crooked
silo. Parts
of your
body I think
of as stripes
which I have
learned to
love along. We
swim naked
in ponds &
I write be-
hind your
back. My thoughts
about you are
not exactly
forbidden, but
exalted because
they are useless,
not intended
to get you
because I have
you & you love
me. It’s more
like a playground
where I play
with my reflection
of you until
you come back
and into the
real you I
get to sink
my teeth. With
you I know how
to relax. &
so I work
behind your
back. Which
is lovely.
Nature
is out of control
you tell me &
that’s what’s so
good about
it. I’m immoderately
in love with you,
knocked out by
all your new
white hair

why shouldn’t
something
I have always
known be the
very best there
is. I love
you from my
childhood,
starting back
there when
one day was
just like the
rest, random
growth and
breezes, constant
love, a sand-
wich in the
middle of
day,
a tiny step
in the vastly
conventional
path of
the Sun. I
squint. I
wink. I
take the
ride."

'Peanut Butter' - Eileen Myles

Listen to 'An American Poem', with visuals in collaboration with Andrea Kirsch, here.

"I was born in Boston in
1949. I never wanted
this fact to be known, in
fact I’ve spent the better
half of my adult life
trying to sweep my early
years under the carpet
and have a life that
was clearly just mine
and independent of
the historic fate of
my family. Can you
imagine what it was
like to be one of them,
to be built like them,
to talk like them
to have the benefits
of being born into such
a wealthy and powerful
American family. I went
to the best schools,
had all kinds of tutors
and trainers, traveled
widely, met the famous,
the controversial, and
the not-so-admirable
and I knew from
a very early age that
if there were ever any
possibility of escaping
the collective fate of this famous
Boston family I would
take that route and
I have. I hopped
on an Amtrak to New
York in the early
‘70s and I guess
you could say
my hidden years
began. I thought
Well I’ll be a poet.
What could be more
foolish and obscure.
I became a lesbian.
Every woman in my
family looks like
a dyke but it’s really
stepping off the flag
when you become one.
While holding this ignominious
pose I have seen and
I have learned and
I am beginning to think
there is no escaping
history. A woman I
am currently having
an affair with said
you know you look
like a Kennedy. I felt
the blood rising in my
cheeks. People have
always laughed at
my Boston accent
confusing “large” for
“lodge,” “party”
for “potty.” But
when this unsuspecting
woman invoked for
the first time my
family name
I knew the jig
was up. Yes, I am,
I am a Kennedy.
My attempts to remain
obscure have not served
me well. Starting as
a humble poet I
quickly climbed to the
top of my profession
assuming a position of
leadership and honor.
It is right that a
woman should call
me out now. Yes,
I am a Kennedy.
And I await
your orders.
You are the New Americans.
The homeless are wandering
the streets of our nation’s
greatest city. Homeless
men with AIDS are among
them. Is that right?
That there are no homes
for the homeless, that
there is no free medical
help for these men. And women.
That they get the message
—as they are dying—
that this is not their home?
And how are your
teeth today? Can
you afford to fix them?
How high is your rent?
If art is the highest
and most honest form
of communication of
our times and the young
artist is no longer able
to move here to speak
to her time…Yes, I could,
but that was 15 years ago
and remember—as I must
I am a Kennedy.
Shouldn’t we all be Kennedys?
This nation’s greatest city
is home of the business-
man and home of the
rich artist. People with
beautiful teeth who are not
on the streets. What shall
we do about this dilemma?
Listen, I have been educated.
I have learned about Western
Civilization. Do you know
what the message of Western
Civilization is? I am alone.
Am I alone tonight?
I don’t think so. Am I
the only one with bleeding gums
tonight. Am I the only
homosexual in this room
tonight. Am I the only
one whose friends have
died, are dying now.
And my art can’t
be supported until it is
gigantic, bigger than
everyone else’s, confirming
the audience’s feeling that they are
alone. That they alone
are good, deserved
to buy the tickets
to see this Art.
Are working,
are healthy, should
survive, and are
normal. Are you
normal tonight? Everyone
here, are we all normal.
It is not normal for
me to be a Kennedy.
But I am no longer
ashamed, no longer
alone. I am not
alone tonight because
we are all Kennedys.
And I am your President."

An American Poem

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ‘other’ places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, 

 is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.

An Uncountable Number of Threads

 music video features soundscapes and footage from immersing ourselves in nature as we ground in our souls as bodies existing outside of isolation, capitalism, gender dysphoria, and the prison state. 

 was written together at the top of a mountain in Happy Valley in Tongva Land, so-called East Los Angeles at Sarita Doe and Champoy yurt dwelling ceremony.



 unearths diasporic queer spirituality and harnesses our ancestral languages - Urdu and Kapampangan.



 is a prayer to honor the bonds of our love that expands and brings regeneration into our multiverse. 

 is a spell to inspire deeper connections to our Earth and welcome in freedom and joy for ourselves and kin.

corporations own our water, pushed out BIPOC farmers, and tourism poisoned the salton sea. as water protectors we must bloom new beginnings.


BLOOM

Why should diaspora mean holding my fingers before my eyes in order to pause forever to try to see what i was once told. i need to depart somehow, -- or fucking arrive.

maybe people like us live in the past and through it, murmurs of places and memories that we didn't even live ourselves, constant convergence of reality and could-be's and parallel stories. but in the instance of trying to live life and get through the day it's been pulling me back hard, with each day it pulls further back because i let it. why should diaspora mean holding my fingers before my eyes in order to pause forever to try to see what i was once told. i need to depart somehow, -- or fucking arrive. and so this is the last of this type of video i hope to make. i want life in my new work. have 

 as an introduction to the beginning, a last few touches.

Corridors, Highways 

 is an experimental super-short poetic film. ángel’s signature artistic method of blending together two film techniques (kinetic and montage), along with two forms of literature (poetry and monologue) brings to life the story that lies in between the lines of the poem. 

 depicts a story about the unspoken mutual desire between two Black lesbians that's only been expressed through flirtatious and seductive body language. Viewers are invited to journey alongside the narrator as they embark on a walk throughout the city to articulate the pining for their unnamed love interest, in an attempt to manifest an encounter between them meeting once again into the universe.

Desire

Created across the country with artists who never met, Sweatmother and Ellen Donnelly were interested in collaborating and creating a film over email.

Dryness

In the COVID-19 pandemic, mirrored fatality transverses through planet earth as international multi-hyphenated artists & farmers. 

 is an eco apocalyptic survival hit to fortify themselves towards food sovereignty & the collapse of the exploitative surveillance state. 

 is a prayer and their reflections from leaving the concrete jungle and restoring in sacred lands, regenerative farms, community gardens, and QTBIPOC (Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color) sanctuary projects on Indigenous land. 

 is an immersive journey about how we are stripped from our ancestral lands and pushed into cities suffering from COVID-19, food apartheid, the police state, and environmental racism.

chand is heartbroken by human biome(trics)’ destruction on yatu

overshadowed by grief, chand refuses to align with yatu

without chand and yatu's lunar eclipse and gravitational pull

yatu's brain coral reefs no longer spawn sanctuaries for a naiad

forests of joint pines suffer from dehydration

and cannot weep pollinating droplets to nourish a patia’nak gubat

naiad and patia’nak gubat communicate their impending extinction through marine fungi and mycelium root messaging

naiad and patia’nak gubat conjure chand and yatus’ metamorphosis by intertwining in cocoon webs ritual

patia’nak gubat and naiad’s cocoon webs realign chand and yatu’s orbit for revolutions to come

chand’s light embraces yatu’s biosphere and their bond regenerates patia’nak gubat, naiad, and all earthbody(s)

EARTHBODY(S)_BIOME(TRICS)

Visual poetry film with layered voices, sound, and the image of ribbons on a wooden fence, floating on the wind.

Not too far away from conjunction, but whatever the opposite of coagulation is:

the process of something standing like a 19th century jelly (where to boil down the feet and the hooves was to make a spectacular trifle). A slab turning to ribbons on a washing line, yes. I’ve seen the same ones twice, like Godard playing the same prank on poor Agnés or the way a hospital smell can rudely interrupt the kitchen, even after all this time.


Something I learned last Easter, is that an ICU can also be called a CCU, and this is where we got stuck. A man at reception claimed ‘I CAN HELP’ by way of a ribbon sash across his chest, and as it hovered millimetres away from the map, I stood thinking to enter the waiting room with this funny story just to lighten the mood, and whether I should run there like on TV or walk like a sensible person. The likelihood of him dying suddenly in the 10 seconds difference between a light jog and a power walk was slim, albeit I am in a place where stupid slim dreadful possibilities 

Some of these days, the ribbons map themselves out like a detective would and I’m yelling whose fault is this! that 

 would end up some lonely murderer, looking for any excuse to lay ribbons out in the garden, and tie them up in chaotically synchronised knots - knots so ridiculous i can hardly stop myself from laughing.

One of those mornings, ha! I sat up, just like ha! He had been sitting with his wife, two heads racking two brains to come up with a solution. See, he was past the 2 months the doctors had given him, and he was actually feeling completely fine. Being the person he was, I am, continue to be, this felt almost rude, to be defying nature this way. No one knew what to do so we had a party. A drink in his hand was funny enough, given the ordeal that was sitting up in bed, the one I helped build in the living room, where he hung fluids from a picture hook and we all thought 

Anyway, another life, a drink in his hand, in a glass, not a bag. Beer spilling everywhere, like you see in films when medieval knights give most of their alcohol to the floor. 

Because the night! Belongs to lovers! Because the night! Belongs to love! 

everyone singing and spilling, this could be the last, this could be the only.

During the faltering of Easter last year, I brushed my teeth and emailed my therapist that I would not be able to make it today. My first apocalypse in June, a week before my 23rd birthday, I continued to make a potato, rosemary and garlic focaccia, and the paramedics watched me through the hatch in the kitchen. My sister went: 

And who knew that an unfunny situation and an unfunny pun would make for such raucous laughter, laughter so heavy I started screaming and did not stop.

Spring, really is quite violent in its arrogance - like the play I heard about where the stage swords were replaced with real blades. The audience made a cacophony of applause for the wound and the palpability of the pool of blood.

Summer, the day we stepped out to see what a post-apocalyptic world would look like and I can’t remember if I was yet 23. Out of the five of us, I realised I am now the only person with a name not beginning with J and I try not to take this personally. This I do remember: walking in a pack, us who had survived whilst the others, they were picking up bits for the barbecue later. None of them are aware that the end has come, been and gone, or that I may never learn how to use our barbecue now.

A very small boy can spell the word Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicavolcanoconiosis, I know because I saw it in a YouTube video my brother showed me. Meaning: lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine ash. The very nature of Bader-Meinhof is that it will appear more frequently the more you think about it.

lumps like the heavy pile of mentioned ribbons, pyjamas

is the moment of the severed head in the box

over and over until it’s almost boring.

Look, there are only a certain amount of severed heads i can receive,

Funny Ribbons

We started thinking through testosterone in gel and expanded to elements such as tears; warm beer; holy water; and mercury. 

With such, we propose a new constellation of technologies through a narration on vulnerability. Tools to destroy and disappear, but also to expand and nourish. 

A homage to the symbolic link in a drop of water and a late-night DM; a soaked jacket coming back home and trying to resuscitate a phone in rice.


The film was created through a back-to-back dialogue between "makers". It’s a research on writing and filming, and simultaneously on affection and subjectivity. It was filmed in Super-8 and 16mm film.


We believe this piece fits this platform because not only it's a reflection on the rewiring of the mind and the body through transmasculinities, but also it's a piece that acts as a moment to breathe, be vulnerable, share and be in peace with uncertainty. It's as much about fear as it's about euphoria.

I Might Go and Throw My Phone Into The Lake, Yeah

 a singer attempts to decipher a song they are singing in a language they do not speak. The 1955 song Muistatko Monrepos'n was the first Finnish record to go gold and is still the fourth best selling single in Finland. The location it refers to occupies a specific place in Finnish cultural memory, as somewhere that was ‘lost’, and as such the waltz is highly loaded. What meaning remains, when the music is stripped away? At present, the nostalgic is not a neutral territory, it can be hard to separate weaponised nostalgia from its more well-intended forms. When its affective qualities are combined with notions of national identity, a potentially difficult space opens up. 

 is about trying to feel the weight of this context, from the outside.

Muistatko (a Method)

“The worship of fat pleasures… You are the embodiment of lust & gluttony combined” An intimate colour-drenched celebration of queer fat sensuality, ‘Object(s) of Desire’ is a three performer portrait & poem film featuring Smashlyn Monroe, Jade Williams & the film’s director Liberty Antonia Sadler. Playfully decadent & emotionally candid, ‘Object(s) of Desire’ invites you to join a Bacchian revelry of XXL homoerotica; with each performer embracing their body & sexuality on their own terms, with pride, liberation & mutual devotion. 

The film’s text explores the complex journey to self-affirmation & acceptance in relation to size & sexuality, reclaiming the fetishization often placed on fat bodies from an external societal gaze. ‘Object(s) of Desire’ aims to be a moment of softness & kinship for fat queers, an invitation to enjoy our sexy selves, and see each other as works of art to be embraced. This short film is a slow & sweet invocation that combines queer joy, fat pleasures & friendship; all while provocatively questioning a fatphobic culture: “do you object?...or indulge?”

Object(s) of Desire

 is a chaotically choreographed allegory of the trans body existing through apocalypse and rebirth which takes place in a hand-made site waiting to be activated. Through an open call, I gathered a group of trans, non-binary and gender-queer performers and began workshopping movements to embody the non-linear narratives of transness, death, and a never-ending loop of apocalypses.

This project consists of a world built from multiple elements that come together sporadically. The written part is made up of prose split up into 5 segments and scattered throughout the performance. The physical part is a haptic habitat made up of a bendy pillar and curly gate post joined in an arch from which a silk banner hangs, stating:

Once this world is over, we can all go home


And a sprawling mess of astroturf, floor tiles, moss, tubes and branches spills onto the floor. A rope ladder in tatters appears into the space via a semi-spontaneous performance.

The performance stems from a culmination of text and objects, gently guided by prompts and a ChoreoGraph. I made this up (I made it all up) and the graph gives hints as to when each portion of text should be inserted into the performance, and the level of energy that will be given to it.

Influences include: Holly Blakey’s choreography in Cowpuncher My Ass, Charlie Josephine’s play I, Joan, the music of Caroline Polachek, Alex Margo Arden & Caspar Heinemann’s The Farmyard installation, Dykegeist by Eve Stainton, and the awkward masculinity afforded to me by early 00’s metal music.

foaming at the throat once more, a crescendo of noise and 

whose fault is this? that i would end up some lonely murderer

a beast of labyrinth, the goo expelled from unholy orifice, the product of a blood-stained pitchfork

the original script says: this is not about you

what happens when tales tucked up begin to unfurl

Once this world is over, we can all go home

home being the middle rung of a rope ladder

being a constant sprouting of sequels and this time around,

exorcising what once stuck, resisting squash and slouch

part x of I’m not counting anymore because I’m too busy melding / coalescing

returning through each finale so much so that structure does not hold me

unfettered! at best! what glory, I undress

to thrash and thrive outside of this line

to wield my half-finishedness like a battle-axe o’erhead

and scream out from under, songs that secrete

once this world is over, we can all go home

an improbable fruition of necromancy, who came about as soon as Sunday Lunch was mentioned

adjust accordingly, shake old dirt and wood splinters off my clothes

and to what we supposedly owe the word ‘mother’, as it has been called:

this creature bearing a creature baring teeth

the back of my head that would not be known to her or him

after peeling and planting and ripping and sliding

this body is archaic, sacred even, in infancy and novelty

this body was dug up from earth on high and shines anew

this body has not succumb to the tumbling track from here to there

no instead this body is building its own ground

the intention being something along the lines of

when i asked to be cut open and sewn anew?

i went looking for serenity and am granted so

in this body as a book I can decipher no matter which way it goes

cut cut cut me up! and fuck fuck fuck me up!

cut! cut! cut me up! and fuck! fuck! fuck me up!

where here to ‘cut’ is to ceremoniously drain:

a water balloon on a hot summer pavement, an abscess in an unkempt horseshoe, a pod of sap trapped under the tree bark

Outro, Forever


our non-linear disentanglement invocation channeling the hybridity of animals+cyborgs+transhumans: the laman haywan and labuad meklooq (kampangan_urdu for: flesh beast and earth creature) - the multispecies inhabitants of 2022 & 3033 living on ecocide 3urth: the corpses of natural ecosystems of planet earth murdered by apathetic humans and artificial intelligence seeking vengeance. our wails ascend us out of pits of lava + untouched seabeds contaminated by technological trash + nuclear shrapnel. as laman haywan and labuad meklooq, we symbiotically conjoin in the wreckage of deserted laboratories, holy ruins, & subaltern fires to evolve and reckon with our retribution.




joining together to change for
nourishment and those who feed
to transfuse
(zyg) - joining together
(mut) - to change
(troph) - for nourishment / those who feed
(00ze) - to transfuse


PRIMALDIAL MAGMA_ZYGMUTROPHOOZE

 is an exploration and call for Black people to escape the terms and identities created by western imperialism. Two lovers run away from Babylon, a subversive look at gender and its trappings within the Black diaspora.

Pandrog

Visual poetry film with landscapes, voice, and sound.

who purposefully drove their car into the river

singing aye the tumbleweed of Grecian gods

never knowing what stone might taste of
  

singing aye the under seed of creaking logs

Postlude II

is an a̶r̶t̶i̶f̶i̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ safe space, where collective practices are amplified through a̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶n̶e̶r̶ monologue invoking other bodies that explore diversity & non-normative s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶ practices ironising capitalism as a form of libidinal pleasure.

R̶A̶V̶E̶ 

Trans woman attempts to translate a poem to her mother over the phone. Film consists of their phone call between the two women and the poem with various backgrounds.

THESE KIDS DON'T GET IT, MA.

Video, sound, painting, costume, tapestry weaving, writing and installation at Chrom Gallery Dalston, London

A boy, a void and a storm cloud enter a room.

(If you can call it a boy, this shape, seeing as it doesn't really possess any edges - only the loud ambiguity of a thing growing into itself.)

About 50 years of melted snow came from me then, spelling

lost relevance as it bore thro’ the trees, see

I cannot tell if I am riding the horse or

(If you can call it a void, this place, given that the doormat asks that you wipe your feet and the walls are lovingly yet haphazardly adorned with motivational greeting cards. All the while aware of some waiting room smell, and the rude inconsideration of time.)

Something as strange as puberty, slipped thro’ the trees

I, the ghostly bowling ball, have always been waiting

something as stubborn as a name, dissolved

and when Boy walked into my mouth he died

as he lay on my dirt he ceased wishing me away

in the gap so you can breathe with the bind

(If you can call it a storm cloud, this one, when it seems as though it recharges on its own power and can't look at itself in the mirror. The rhythm goes like this ~~~~ and the lightning comes in whenever.)

A young man from Texas called it Mountain Madness, upon Icelandic moss

I didn’t ask for any of this, there are no handles here.

Strange sibling the shoes no longer fit, and glorious wonder I name thee fear.

A storm has no agenda, only intention to erupt

A form only craves to be unbound once it has seen how the lightning has struck.

O’ sibling, the magnitude of it all, a job simply being done.

The aftermath: split hairs of crises / certain epiphanies when young.

I break the ground below you, moss into abstract splatter

I ripped through the clouds for you, to show you how you matter.

(If you can call it a room, this midwinter picnic, complete with Greek statues and a life-long plush carpet - perfect for wrestling.)


There is enough room if they all sit inside one another, and repeat this over and over until they are the humming noise at the back of a radiator. Impossible to repeat and unlikely to stop, not necessarily in the bad way either. Together, they exist in the hanging, the limbo of an air-conditioned airport that will take any currency and call you anything you like. No one is made to feel silly here, but they still do, like all of us who are unsure and humming.

Together, it makes quite a pleasant tune.

The Boy, The Void and The Storm Cloud

The 6-minute experimental film is a parallel narrative of reciting the poetry lines from Siufung's own poem 

, as well as a black-and-white documentation of themself as a transgender person. Their film attempts to formulate transgender subjectivity through retelling their own gender struggle. By making one of the first experimental films on transgender issues in Asia, Siufung hopes to provoke other transgender individuals to create a language for their own stories.

Unfinished

We hiked a bridge to nowhere and at the end were metal locks scratched with names to symbolize eternal love. We gazed at a vale in the middle of forest mountains with a river vortex flowing to nourish the four corners of the farming town: Negra (so-called Blanca), Murcia, Spain with its abundant lemons, grapes, olives, and oranges. Down below were dogs, baby sharks, ducks, butterflies, and murmurations.

 is a tale honoring the world building created when moments of reciprocal, trusting, and sacred love for our lovers and the lands we protect & steward are prioritized and fought for.

 contains field recordings of our immersion during our residency at Centro Negra with AADK Spain: the church bell that rings every hour, the 2022 New Years countdown, parades, farms, climbing the top of Valle de Ricote, and the industrial dam at the center of Negra.

VALE

A deeply personal narrative, formed out of the protogonist own experience as a transgender individual. Intimate moments were captured, as a way of letting people enter a personal diary.


Adapted to André's story, we used written work by Chella Man,
a deaf trans activist. 

What Makes A Man 

The filmmaker collects notes on the Jewish water ritual mikvah, which slip into immersive, recollections of memories. 

Mikvah, directly translated as a ‘collection [of water]’, a ritual immersion in water revolving around the body’s innate holiness and purposed towards marking transition – physical and transcendent, minute, and tectonic – becomes the visual language and essayistic frame for exploring the filmmaker’s own marking and ideas. As information and images are collected, and details and meanings of the ritual of the mikvah understood, so too are the feelings and thoughts which have brought the filmmaker to make the film. As they collect themselves, and the memories they recall underwater come closer to the present day, the truths they (re)claim become an offering on the way we evolve and love.

Categories

Visual Poetry