Christodoulos Makris

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 ...

I'm grateful for attention my work continues to receive from other poets and writers, reviewers and editors, essayists and academics. I'm especially pleased when this is not confined to discussions of the most recent book, but extends to the broader arc of my practice, giving a multifaceted and cumulative reading of it. This is Part One of a two-part post rounding up some commentary that appeared over the first half of 2024. It focuses on reviews and essays on my books or other published work. Part Two ( coming soon now available here ) will log coverage of activities of mine that extend beyond print publishing. * On 11 January 2024, UK-based  Stride Magazine published a review of  Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document (Veer Books, 2023) which I was happy to note given the attention Stride gives to poetry from small presses and in broadly experimental modes, and especially since in the past the magazine published one of the most comprehensive reviews of my third boo...

I'm very pleased to be partnering with Poetry Ireland on two connected initiatives taking place this summer and autumn: I will be offering a guided tour (in person) of the exhibition Is this a poem? which I devised and curated and which runs at Museum of Literature Ireland until 21 July 22 September 2024; and I will be leading a 6-week (online) course with title 'Poetry in the Contemporary World'. Full details below. You can book a place on the tour and/or the course through the relevant links. /// Christodoulos Makris - Is this a poem? Curator Tour Saturday, July 13, 10:30am - 12:30pm In Person: Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 Cost: €25 [BOOK HERE] Join Christodoulos at MoLI for a special guided tour in which he will introduce and discuss the individual items comprising Is this a poem? He will explore and speak about the concepts underpinning the exhibition and how we experience and view poetry. Devised and curated by Christodou...

I'm excited to be taking part in the Listowel - New York International Residency programme 2024-25, a unique two-part residency aiming to connect artists from the experimental theatre, dance, and performance scenes in Ireland and New York City. Led by St John's Theatre & Arts Centre in Listowel, Co Kerry, and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, Kerry County Arts Office, and the Irish Arts Center in New York City, this initiative supports 7 selected artists - four from Ireland and three from New York - to spend two weeks (20 May - 2 June 2024) in Listowel, a small town in north Co Kerry known for its literary heritage, and one week in January 2025 at the Irish Arts Centre in New York. I'm participating in this cool generative opportunity alongside six other artists operating in experimental performance modes and active in a range of artforms and locations: Anthony Keigher, Emily Davis, Gabriel Graves, Amanda Horowitz, Jane Deasy, and Hayley Stahl. According to th...