Eileen Myles poetry to Tuskar Rock

Tuskar Rock has acquired I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975 – 2014 by poet and radical icon Eileen Myles.

I Must Be Living Twice brings together selections from the poet's previous work with a set of "bold" new poems that "reflect her sardonic, unapologetic and fiercely intellectual literary voice".

Serpent’s Tail has simultaneously acquired the poet’s cult 1974 novel Chelsea Girls which it will publish as a Serpent’s Tail Classic. This "breathtakingly inventive" autobiographical novel draws on Myles’s memories of her 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.

UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired for both titles by PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit New York.

Myles is "one of the most important and beloved" radical icons of American letters and has been described as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature". She has published 20 books of poetry, art journalism, fiction, plays and libretti.

Hannah Westland, publishing director of Serpent’s Tail, said: "I was thrilled when Tuskar Rock Press acquired Eileen Myles’s new and collected poems I Must be Living Twice, and was delighted to acquire her cult 1994 novel Chelsea Girls to publish alongside the poems. Over her career, Myles has been an iconic and inspirational figure, inspiring a generation of writers including Maggie Nelson and Ben Lerner and producing a unique body of work across poetry, fiction and memoir which is a political as it is personal, as groundbreaking and radical as it is intimate and open. We can’t wait to publish these books this summer."

Tuskar Rock will publish I Must Be Living Twice in August 2016. Serpent’s Tail will publish Chelsea Girls in the same month.