Christodoulos Makris

Granby Park is now up and running. I went along to the official launch on Thursday and found the vibe quite amazing. The space looks and feels incredible - beautiful, welcoming and edgy at the same time - while the surrounding area has been infused with new vitality & an air of possibility. I'm really happy and proud to be one of the many people helping bring it to life. For my second contribution to the project I'm putting together a spoken word event called  'Vice Versa' in which poets will perform "covers" of each other's work in pairs. Intended both as an experiment in re-interpretation and a celebration of the diverse strands of the poetry and spoken word scene in Dublin (and beyond) the event also chimes with the project's overall spirit of community/collaboration/exchange. With: Kevin Higgins & Dimitra Xidous Kit Fryatt & Cah-44 Eileen Casey & Anne Fitzgerald Eleanor Hooker & Christodoulos Makris Máighréad Medbh

Upstart , the arts collective that brought art and poetry to the streets of Dublin during the 2011 general election campaign, is for its second project transforming a vacant site in inner city Dublin into a pop up park and place of creativity for a period of one month, starting this coming Thursday 22 August. I'm delighted to be involved in several ways with this brilliant initiative. First up I'm directing an interactive poetry installation, scheduled to run throughout the project's duration, through which visitors to Granby Park will create a communal poem to mark the site. The poem will be composed using the 'exquisite corpse' technique: each contributor will add to the text while being aware of the last contributed element only. So, visit Granby Park  from 22 August for an array of free arts events, outdoor performances, cinema, live music, educational activities and a pop up café - and help write the 'Granby Park' poem by responding to the last l

Almost Fit To Be Hugged , a short essay in which I discuss Thomas Brezing 's ongoing performance-based 'Carpet Man' project, is in the July/August 2013 issue of the Visual Artists' News Sheet (VAN) published by Visual Artists Ireland . Carpet Man himself makes an appearance on the front cover. Devised primarily as an information source for artists in Ireland, VAN is distributed free of charge to members of Visual Artists Ireland, and is also available from galleries and arts centres. * [Update 2/10/13] Almost Fit To Be Hugged   has now been archived on the VAI website.