Christodoulos Makris

In a discussion-based oral history of SoundEye Festival (1997-2017) collated by David Toms and published in the special poetry issue of The Stinging Fly  magazine in the summer of 2022 , my absence from the history of the festival as a forum for international experimental poetries in Ireland was noted and remarked upon. I'm happy that this is now being rectified, and that I'll be taking part in the upcoming revival edition, the first since 2017: SoundEye 2025 takes place in over the weekend 4-6 July 2025 with a free schedule of events at University College Cork and Shandon Studios, Cork City. And I'm very pleased to be reading with Nisha Ramayya, Peter Manson, and Gonca Özmen on Saturday 5 July (12 - 1.30pm) at The Shtepps auditorium in UCC. Founded in 1997, SoundEye - Festival of the Arts of the Word  was an annual festival of poetry held in Cork and dedicated to the exploration of innovative writing. With a focus on the legacies of modernism, translation, and the ...

I was happy to accept an invitation from Poetry Ireland to host an INSIGHTS masterclass this autumn. 'our sullen art: the poet after AI,' my contribution to this occasional series, will take place on Thursday 16 October 2025, and bookings are now open . INSIGHTS is Poetry Ireland's masterclass series, "led by some of the most respected voices in contemporary poetry in Ireland, and designed to support poets at all stages of their careers." Places are limited. The session will take place online via Zoom, with participants able to join from anywhere. See basic information and masterclass description below  as announced by Poetry Ireland , including booking link. Full details here . Poet Christodoulos Makris hosts an online writing masterclass, our sullen art: the poet after AI , for poets at all stages of their careers on Thursday, 16th October. Thursday 16 October 2025, 6.30pm - 8.30pm Online (via Zoom) Tickets: €25 Reserve a Spot Here.   About the Masterclass How d...

Join us on Thursday 1 May 2025 at the brand new Kirkos venue in central Dublin (1 Little Green Street, Dublin 7) for a 60 minute performance from Chapter 5: May of my durational writing project DIAL , with sonic interventions from Joanna Mattrey , Nick Roth and Keith Lindsay . A live, semi-improvised cross-disciplinary collaboration  featuring spoken text, viola, saxophone, and electronics with live radio feedback & looped sounds. DIAL is a durational-procedural-aleatory work of poetic prose I composed through real-time, automatic transcriptions of spoken language from a different radio station broadcasting anywhere in the world, performed each and every day over the entire calendar year 2021 and linked seamlessly with short pieces of 'original' text I wrote contemporaneously. The composition of DIAL was enabled by a PLATFORM 31 award . Kirkos is an experimental music ensemble & DIY venue/rehearsal space and artist studios. Doors 7.30pm / Performance 8pm ...

I was very happy to accept an exciting invitation by Cúirt International Festival of Literature director Manuela Moser to produce a brand new poem + poetry intervention in response to the festival's archives, to mark 40 years of Cúirt. My contribution, titled 'Diachronic Bonhomie', will be installed across the sites of the festival around Galway city over the duration of its 40th edition (8-13 April 2025) in a combination of print, visual and audio forms. And I will be speaking about the commission and related aspects of my practice in a festival event at The Mick Lally Theatre on Friday 11 April. Cúirt is a world class literature festival - one of Europe's oldest, and widely regarded as one of Ireland's finest. Among the writers programmed to participate this year are Sally Rooney, Paul Muldoon, Kayo Chingonyi, Roddy Doyle, Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Anne Enright, and Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian. Check out the full 2025 programme here . About 'Dia...

On Saturday 22 March we will reprise our collaborative performance 'Housing Data ~ Sonified: The Sound and Poetry of Ireland's Housing Data' at Ormston House , a contemporary art gallery in Limerick city centre. This 10-movement composition incorporating my original poem 'Press Play' was created and is performed in collaboration with composer and pianist  David Bremner and violinist Larissa O'Grady . It  premiered on 23 April 2024 at TU Dublin Recital Hall . Ormston House says: Data related to Ireland's severe housing crisis converted into a multi-movement work for violin and keyboard, with readings of appropriated/found texts. The concert explores the ‘sonification’ of data related to Ireland’s severe housing crisis. The artists have sifted through data from sources including CSO, Central Bank, and Global Property Guide looking for insight about what is driving the crisis and the suffering caused by it. This data is converted into a multi-movement work for...

I had a wonderfully intense time in New York City in the first half of January, facilitated by a formal residency at Irish Arts Center awarded to me through a two-part cross-Atlantic residency programme led by St John's Theatre & Arts Centre, Listowel, Co Kerry. The core component of the residency was an opportunity to work further on my next poetry manuscript using the space and facilities at the Center, located on 11th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood in Manhattan, while feeding off the energy, sounds, images and the general tumult, urgency and creativity of New York City. While my time there was short I was able to add some new elements to the manuscript, but more importantly to begin to think of it and start editing in structural, macro terms. I have for a long time now recognised that I write or make hybrid-form work in book- or project-length cycles, rather than in shorter, standard poem-length forms, even though those cycles are sometimes composed of link...

In the first half of January 2025 I will be in residence at Irish Arts Center in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York City. This residency represents the second half of my participation in the inaugural  Listowel - New York International Residency Programme , and my aim while at the centre is to develop further a new poetry manuscript. My stay in New York  is also giving me the opportunity to reconnect with the other artists from Ireland and the US selected to participate in this programme, to attend some theatre, music and poetry gigs and shows, and to make new connections with writers, artists and organisations operating in the city. And with the formal programme not providing a showcase opportunity, I'm grateful that friends and collaborators of mine currently and previously based in New York have generously arranged the following two exciting events on the occasion of my visit, at which I will be performing with some brilliant local poets and musicians: - On Wednes...

Tune in to Dublin Digital Radio  on Saturday 7 December 2024 at 2pm local time, where I will be performing excepts from my writing project DIAL , with sonic interventions by Joanna Mattrey, Keith Lindsay and Nick Roth, in a 60 minute broadcast presented by Diatribe Records. DIAL is a durational-procedural-aleatory work I composed by live-transcribing 5 minutes of talk radio broadcasting anywhere in the world each and every day across the entire calendar year 2021, and linking these transcripts with short pieces of 'original' writing produced contemporaneously. The radio station accessed each day depended on the previous day's text, and was determined by entering keywords from it as search terms on the TuneIn platform. The full manuscript runs to over 120k words, and it is divided into 12 chapters arranged as uninterrupted blocks of text. Over the past few months I have been working with Diatribe Records in translating DIAL back into sound by speaking the entire te...

In the first half of September 2024 I will give two public readings: this week at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin along with Bebe Ashley ; and next week at the Embassy of Ireland in Riga, Latvia, with Madara Gruntmane . Details on both events below. And continue reading for details of a new, limited edition publication of mine coming this month with MoLI Editions, containing my short curator's essay on Is this a poem? and some beautiful images from the exhibition. A reminder that  Is this a poem?  closes on 22 September, so there's still a little time left to visit . * MoLI First Fridays: September 2024 Friday 6 September Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland 6pm - 9pm, Free Admission 6.30pm | Reading Christodoulos Makris Hear from the curator of Is this a poem? , whose live-generated mass collaboration poem ‘Chances Are’ is projected in the exhibition. 8pm | Reading Bebe Ashley A reading by Belfast-based poet, whose ‘...

As well as making work for books and other publication formats, my practice extends to performance and other modes of presentation, while my editorial and curatorial activities operate in tandem with my creative work feeding and influencing each other. Following on from the first part of this double post, which rounded up recent responses to my published work , below I log some press on my curated exhibition Is this a poem?  - whose run at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) I'm happy to report has been extended to 22 September 2024 - and of the premiere of 'Press Play,' a collaborative cross-disciplinary composition and performance relating to Ireland's housing crisis. * On 7 April 2024, the inaugural episode of the radio programme Poetry People on Ireland's state broadcaster RTÉ Radio One included a segment called 'What is Poetry?' For this segment, prompted by the advent of Is this a poem? , the show's producers commissioned a short essay from Museum ...