Wordfest Presents Eileen Myles

Wordfest is bringing the indescribably brilliant Eileen Myles to Calgary for the first time. It’s your rare opportunity to experience a cultural force celebrated by the Paris Review, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. The renowned poet, novelist, public talker, and journalist will be presenting their latest poetry book called, Evolution, which has been called, “Chicken soup for the queer soul” by Ashley Tomaszewski of the Literati Bookstore. They will also be presenting their book, Afterglow: A Dog Memoir, about their relationship with their pit bull named Rosie. Hosted by Shelley Youngblut, this event includes an on-stage interview and audience Q&A, followed by a book signing. Cash bar available.

 About Evolution

The first all-new collection of poems by Eileen Myles since the selected volume I Must Be Living Twice, Evolution finds the celebrated writer at the forefront of American literature and culture, crafting radically introspective work in the characteristically exuberant style that the New York Times called 'one of the essential voices in American poetry.'

Evolution, with its channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones, radiates vital insight, purpose, and risk, like in these opening lines of the title poem:

Something
unearthly
about
today
so I buy
a Diet Coke &
a newspaper
a version of “me”
something
about me on the
earth & its sneakers
& feeling like
the earth’s furniture
but that can’t be
true or like
the coke & the Times
it’s true for a little
while.

"The lines in Evolution are physical, a body unleashed but not yet comfortable and not without fear. The short lines rush down the page, movement as touch, touch as freedom."  –Natalie Diaz, New York Times Book Review

About Afterglow: A Dog Memoir

Prolific and widely renowned, Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match” (New York Review of Books). This newest book paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a beloved confidant: the pit bull called Rosie. In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly became central to the writer’s life and work. During the course of their sixteen years together, Myles was madly devoted to the dog’s well-being, especially in her final days. 

"To read Eileen Myles is to feel as if the poet, after spotting you across the room at a crowded party, has guided you by the elbow to a private corner to confide their personal theories of the universe."  –Claire Luchette, O, the Oprah Magazine

Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles’s childhood puppet to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull, from lyrical transcriptions of their walks to Rosie’s enlightened narration from the afterlife, Afterglow (a dog memoir) illuminates all that it can mean when we dedicate our existence to a dog.

 About Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently a novelist, public talker and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their twenty books include evolution (poems), Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 re-issue of Cool for You, I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the PSA, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.