Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles is a well-known lesbian poet and writer. Myles ran for president of the USA in 1991-92. Zoe Leonard's 1992 poem, "I want a president", which begins with the line: "I want a dyke for president", was written to celebrate Myles's presidential run.

Myles uses the labels "genderqueer" and "trans" but is not comfortable with the label "nonbinary".

They have been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Quotes
"I mean, I feel like I am very trans-identified. To some extent I felt I did, in fact, identify as a man in a woman's body. I’m starting to think that trans feelings are really at the root of homosexuality."

"I started to think about they, how it contains multitudes, and my sense of myself. I feel like a gender knot or something. I feel male, and I feel female. I feel queer. I feel trans. I feel I'm a dyke, I'm a lesbian. I feel like a fag sometimes. It's very mobile, and they really seems to hold that. And I also really love that I'm in my sixties, and of course certain people transition at all points in their life, but I don’t know anybody my age who's changed their pronouns. I feel really happy that I can claim that, that I can do that. It feels like a mark I'm delighted to hold, and say Fuck you, if you don’t like it."

Links

 * https://eileenmyles.com