Eileen Myles Discusses Education, Palestine, More, at Electric Lit

Candace Williams talks to Eileen Myles at Electric Lit about "settler colonialism, pedagogy, queer humor, and Myles’ trip to Palestine." They also look closely at Myles's poem, "I am Ann Lee," from the new collection, Evolution (Grove, 2018). An excerpt from their conversation:

CW: Thinking more about “I am Ann Lee,” I noticed that you mentioned Palestine pretty early in the poem, then you circle back to it multiple times in the book. I talk to a lot of poets who are afraid to even mention Palestine in a poem, or even in tweets. I have friends who can’t even tweet about Palestine because they’re afraid to be fired by their employer.

EM: It’s astonishing. I think it’s incomprehensible, but also entirely comprehensible how we got to this place. Israel’s policy with Palestine is the same as the United States’ policy of with the native people and the enslavement of African-American people. It’s like this America, the way it was constructed and established, is of choices that are so similar to the choices of Israel in Palestine. We’re watching the same thing happen.

CW: That reminds me of June Jordan’s poems about Palestine. I was wondering how you approach writing about Palestine. Is it similar to how you approach other topics or do you say to yourself, “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and talk about the Palestinian people and what’s going on in Israel.”

EM: Well, I had the astonishing good fortune, to travel to Palestine. There was a group called PalFest and I was invited to come to five cities in Palestine with this group. We were there to be shown and I think we were chosen as people who are already disposed to know and think about Palestine. For me, it’s really been the gradual thing. I just wrote an essay that I’m writing nervously about Palestine. I’m not even sure of the name of the journal, but it’s a friend of mine Ismail, who was on that trip, and he’s working with a magazine and they’re doing a Palestine issue. He asked a bunch of us to contribute...

Read on at Electric Lit.