Eileen Myles Interviewed by Linn Ullman
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- “Sometimes I feel female, sometimes I feel male, sometimes I feel androgynous, sometimes I feel absent. And I thought, ‘they’ is the pronoun of that feeling.” Watch two widely acclaimed authors, American poet Eileen Myles interviewed by Norwegian writer Linn Ullmann, talk about Myles' gender, life and writing, and about the fight against categorisation.
“Writing is an opportunity to be many things.” Talking about identity and gender, Myles shares the desire to be a boy as a child, and the sense of fraud they experienced as a young woman, “posing” as a female. The experience of going to Catholic School, where you were “endlessly stripped of a self,” and the early loss of an alcoholic father, Myles feels, has entered their writing in the shape of melancholy, becoming “this residue from, in some ways, undigested sadness.” Writing, Myles argues, is in fact “massive mourning.” What writing can also do, Myles continues, is put you back together if you’re broken: “You’re making this kind of collage of beauty or success or making failure beautiful. You reconstruct your wholeness. And then the cracks mean it’s real.”
Eileen Myles (b. 1949) is an American poet, novelist, performer and art journalist, who has produced several volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays and performance pieces over the last three decades. Publications include ‘Afterglow’ (a dog memoir) (2017), ‘Inferno: A Poet’s Novel’ (2010), ’Skies’ (2001), ’Cool for You’ (2000) and ‘Chelsea Girls’ (1994, 2015). In 2015 ‘I Must Be Living Twice. New and Selected Poems 1975-2014’ was published. Myles has received a wide range of awards and fellowships such as four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Award (Poetry Society of America) (2010), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2012) and The Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing (2015). For more see: www.eileenmyles...
Linn Ullmann (b. 1966) is a Norwegian author, journalist and literary critic. Her debut novel was ’Before You Sleep’ in 1998 and she has since published several critically acclaimed international bestsellers including ‘Grace’ (2002/2006), and ‘Unquiet’ (2018) (De Urolige, 2016). Ullmann is the recipient of the prestigious Gold Pen award and the Norwegian Reader’s Prize, among others.
Eileen Myles was interviewed by Linn Ullmann onstage at the Louisiana Literature festival in Humlebæk, Denmark in August 2017. In the video, Myles reads from the novel ‘Chelsea Girls’.
Cameras: Rasmus Quistgaard and Anders Lindved
Edited by Klaus Elmer
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020
Supported by Nordea-fonden
FOLLOW US HERE!
Website: channel.louisia...
Facebook: / louisianachannel
Instagram: / louisianachannel
Twitter: / louisianachann
*Enjoyed this? We have five videos in total with Eileen Myles on our channel - find them here*
ua-cam.com/users/TheLouisianaChannelsearch?query=eileen%20myles
I applied to work with them this weekend and they are amazing. Prayers up.
“So what’s your deal with this thing?” Feels like it could have used some work before being asked, right? Especially on something as layered and reflected on as gender with Myles’ work. Am I crazy?
I enjoyed this. Myles is a very dynamic and responsive interviewee. They could have been a solo act although I think Linn did a fine job. It seems both lived in NYC at the same time. [[KING KONG - Linn’s mother has a similar tremor covered-up by many directors].
Thanks so much, Robert. If you're interested in Eileen Myles you might like to know, that we actually have five videos with her on our channel!
You can find them here: ua-cam.com/users/TheLouisianaChannelsearch?query=eileen%20myles
October 2022: I enjoyed the interview, I like Eileen’s humor. I think of her as The Mourning Bird, if I knew her personally that’s what I would name her.
Brief bio
I’m Al Fogel Born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” I continued writing poems and in 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun.
Subsequently I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun.
Here are some examples of each of my specialties
senryu
~
dentist chair
the hygienist removes
my Bluetooth
~
Internet argument
all his words in CAPS
hers in EMOTICONS
~
after the divorce
he spends more time
at the dollar store
~
damsel in distress
clarke kent still searching
for a phone booth
~
cauliflower ears
once a contender
now boxing vegetables
~
under
the influence -
moonshine
~
Audubon sale
all variety of seeds. . .
early birds welcome
~
Buddhist fortune cookie
the unfolded paper reads
“ better luck next birth!”
~
sudden downpour. . .
the adults run
for shelter
** as you can see, senryu is usually humorous, but it can also be serious. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking ( dealing with the Holocaust):
~
cattle cars
between the slats
human eyes
~
stutthof -
the stench of burnt hair
from the chimneys
~
Tanka ( I already posted the Jackson Pollock one about painting his face but here’s another Tanka
~
Here is another Tanka:
thrift store purchase
inside the leather jacket
a tarnished half-heart
~
Haibuns
The Mathematics of Retribution
“Karma is i fathomable,”
I inform her
It’s late and our conversation turns heavy
“ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds.
“If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.”
“ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin.
“What if you murdered me in this life
because I murdered you in a prior life
karmic debts and dues are now equalized.”
“But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?”
“As I said, karma is unfathomable.”
We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix
Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep
Stutthof -
the stench of burnt hair
from the chimneys
~~
Mama
There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home
Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness.
She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior.
nursing home
bumper wheelchair
her favorite pastime
Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes.
When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened.
thrift store
the dress mama donated
she wants to buy
On a cold December morn mama passed.
The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes.
autumn twilight -
oh mama tuck me under
hug me one more time
~
‘Round Midnight
It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way.
My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough.
But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night.
new Harlem
the a-train replaced
by the bullet
~
Atlantic City New Jersey
I had just graduated from high school
I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in...
first “french kiss”
under the boardwalk
“over the moon!”
~~
All love,
Al
this interviewer.....yikes but Eileen is always so insightful.
She's an author - they could've switched places - I don't know if she has done interviews before (except, well, with her father, Ingmar Bergman, for one of her books)
MORE MORE MORE!
Good ❤️❤️
I read Eileen aloud. Cause. Is a l I v e. Crushes
Ullman is quite possibly The Worst interviewer ever. She starts out as though she's reading Myles Wikipedia page, constantly interrupts, cuts Myles off mid-topic, jumps around, keeps her off balance and talks way too much. She's dictatorial: Read this, then read to here and just read this part of this poem. I want to hear from Myles, not this awful interviewer who didn't bother to do her homework. Myles completely lost control of their conversation. But, hey, a free trip to Denmark...