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What Poet Eileen Myles Advocates This Month
What Poet Eileen Myles Advocates This Month
Here's what Eileen Myles, poet, prolific literary activist, and author of 18 books, plays, and libretti (including her new double volume, Snowflake/different streets), is passionate about this month.
...The Occupy Movement
Though nobody's living in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park today, the message delivered there, that Americans of all ages, especially the young, are not taking lightly the miserable reality of our economy being held hostage by greedy bankers and brokers and politicians, is the best news I've heard in more than a decade. A large number of the people most involved in the Occupy movement are queer, and the fact of "us" has been in the message from the start, as were poetry readings and the abundance of books on site during the most active part of the occupation downtown--these aspects make this political movement both unique to the 21st century and reminiscent of a less media-driven political moment when the collective body, the human microphone and not the electronic one, has the power to speak to its time. OccupyTogether.org
...the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.
It's a literary organization, very queer-friendly, that has readings and workshops and exudes a general feeling of connectivity of writing to culture. I got my education there in the '70s instead of grad school, and it is bringing the word to the people still. PoetryProject.org
...Steven Alan shirts.
I can't resist them. I love going into the Steven Alan store and getting one for a book party or just because I've worked hard on something and want to own something new. I'm not against wealth; I just think everybody should have it, same as health.
StevenAlan.com
...Iceland, for the crazy gray and lime-green landscape, geysers, one of the oldest parliaments in the world, a lesbian prime minister (Johanna Sigurdardottir), and an economic comeback produced by supporting the people, not banks, and by investing more money in culture and social programs rather than making cutbacks. Iceland.is
...living with another writer I love. My girlfriend, Leopoldine Core, is beginning to publish her fiction in journals and websites but both of us are already very good readers of each other's work. We tend to slide whatever we're working over to the other at some point and get that crucial help. She -- I guess we -- are a gift.
