time at P.S. 122. Politics and teaching At the beginning of the 1991–1992 presidential election, Myles heard George H. W. Bush speak about the threat to freedom of speech posed by the dialog of activists and minoritized people. With that statement, Myles "realized there was this amazing political power to speech." Myles then conducted an "openly female" write-in campaign for the office of President of the United States from the East Village that spiraled into a project of national interest. Part performance art, part protest, this gesture was meant to offer an alternative glimpse into what progressive, radical, and socially committed politics could look like. 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. Beginning in 2002, Myles began a five-year stint as a Professor of Writing at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). UCSD funded the research and travel grant that enabled the creation of Inferno (2010), as well as Hell, an opera composed by Michael Webster, for which Myles wrote the libretto. Since leaving UCSD in 2007, Myles has been a Visiting Writer at Bard College, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Montana-Missoula, Columbia University School of the Arts, and New York University. In 2016, Myles endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in a BuzzFeed piece entitled Hillary Clinton: The Leader You Want When The World Ends. Myles was also approached by Clinton's campaign to write a poem, as part of "Artists for Hillary", a mostly-female group which included Jenny Holzer and Maya Lin, whose creative statements were testament to their support for Clinton's presidential bid. Myles's poem was entitled MOMENTUM 2016. Written works Poetry By their own account, Myles moved from Boston to New York in 1974 "to be a poet," where they became associated with a group of poets at St. Mark's Poetry Project. Myles's first book, The Irony of the Leash, was published by Jim Brodey from the St. Mark's Poetry Project in 1978. In 1977 and 1979, Myles published issues of dodgems, a literary magazine, a title referring, in the vernacular of Great Britain, to bumper cars, specifically those of Revere Beach, MA. The title is said to serve as a metonym for the collision of aesthetic differences that characterized the poetry scene of that time. The