An evening with Eileen Myles

Situated at the intersection of spoken word and socially engaged literature, their work is marked by extraordinary linguistic intensity, formal fearlessness, and a profound social sensibility. Rooted in the textures of everyday experience, it never remains indifferent to the world it describes: the personal becomes a site of social observation, while language becomes a means of examining structures of power, gender, class, embodiment, and identity.

Myles writes in a language that appears deceptively simple, closely attuned to the rhythms of everyday speech, yet is in fact crafted with remarkable precision. Their poems can be at once confessional and analytical, intimate and public, spare and formally radical. The tension between the apparent spontaneity of their voice and its acute literary self-awareness allows individual experience to become a point of departure for broader reflections on how we live, work, love, inhabit the city, and negotiate our place in the world.

During the event, we will discuss poetry as a practice of living and a mode of presence in the public sphere, the countercultural traditions of New York, queer and performance poetry, and what happens to personal experience when it is subjected to the transformative force of language. The event will also feature a live performance reading of Eileen Myles’s poetry.

The event accompanies the publication of the first extensive Polish-language presentation of Eileen Myles’s work. Published by the Culture and Arts Centre in Wrocław, the volume brings together approximately sixty poems spanning different periods of their career – from texts associated with the New York poetry scene of the 1970s and 1980s to later work – offering readers an opportunity to trace the development of Myles’s distinctive poetics. The poems have been translated by Maciej Topolski, Joanna Mąkowska, and Karol Poręba.

To date, only one of Myles’s poems, “Broken Cindy,” has appeared in Polish. This volume therefore constitutes not only the first substantial encounter between Polish readers and their work, but also an important addition to the body of contemporary American poetry available in Polish translation.

About the publication:

Eileen Myles
A day, several bright days
Selected Poems

Edited by: Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś and Paweł Szroniak
Selected by: Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś, Joanna Mąkowska, Karol Poręba
Translated by: Joanna Mąkowska, Karol Poręba, Maciej Topolski
Afterword: Joanna Krakowska
Coordination: Marharyta Rubanenko

Published by: Culture and Art Centre in Wrocław – Cultural Institution of the Government of the Lower Silesian Region
Graphic design: Zuzanna Derlacz
Illustrations: Ewa Głowacka

This publication was made possible with the support of the Instytut Książki as part of the Other Traditions publishing programme. The project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland under earmarked grant No. 3/DF-VII/2026 and by the budget of the Lower Silesian Region.

The event is part of the programme of the New Perspectives International Performance Festival. This project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund — a state-administered special-purpose fund—and from the budget of the Lower Silesian Region.

BIOS: 

Eileen Myles (b. 1949, they/them) moved to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Since then, they’ve published twenty-five books across genres (though mostly poetry) in the first-person vernacular they’ve become known for.

Recent publications are Birdwatching (Fonograf, 2026), featuring an unpublished long poem from 1978 and early work was just released in April; Pathetic Literature (2022), which they edited and a “Working Life” (2023), poems. Their fiction includes Chelsea Girls (1994) which won France’s Inrockuptibles Prize for best foreign novel, Cool for You (2000), Inferno (a poet’s novel) (2010) and Afterglow (2017).

Writing on art was gathered in the volume The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009). Books of poetry include Evolution (2018) and I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014. Their super-8 puppet road film “The Trip” is on YouTube. They live in New York & in Marfa, TX

Kacper Bartczak (b. 1972) is a Polish poet, essayist, translator from English, literary critic and scholar, and academic lecturer. He has published the poetry collections Strefa błędów urojonych (2000), Domy mediowe (2003), Życie świetnych ludzi (2009), Przenicacy (2013), Wiersze organiczne (2015), Pokarm suweren (2017), Naworadiowa (2019), Widoki wymazy (2021), and Czas kompost (2023), as well as the essay collections Świat nie scalony (2009) and Materia i autokreacja. Dociekania w poetyce wielościowej (2019). He has also published numerous translations of American poets.

Bartczak first gained recognition as an essayist, receiving the Literatura na Świecie Award in 2009 for Świat nie scalony. His poetry attracted wider critical attention with Wiersze organiczne, which was shortlisted for the Gdynia Literary Prize and the Silesius Wrocław Poetry Award in 2016. He was nominated for the Silesius Award again in 2023 for Czas kompost. In 2025, he received the Silesius Wrocław Poetry Award for Lifetime Achievement.

His translations from English include poetry collections by Peter Gizzi, Rae Armantrout, and Charles Bernstein. He has also translated and written about the work of poets and writers such as John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Muriel Rukeyser, and Louise Glück, as well as the critic Marjorie Perloff. He is a university professor and head of the Department of North American Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies, University of Łódź. His poetry has been translated into English and German.