Christodoulos Makris

“zimZalla is a unique publishing imprint specialising in literary objects. With twenty-five objects published to date, including poetry tea bags, greetings cards, scented chocolate bars and a backwards book in a miniature coffin, zimZalla celebrates the handmade, the ephemeral and the eccentric. zimZalla at the Hardy Tree , co-curated by The Enemies Project, is a never before available opportunity to see all twenty-five objects in one place at one time. A true trip down the rabbit hole.” I'm excited to be participating in the closing reading for the zimZalla exhibition at the Hardy Tree Gallery (119 St Pancras Road, London NW1 1UN) on Monday 27 October. Starting at 7.30pm, the event also features the TRYIE Collective (Zuzana Husarova, Olga Pekova +), Tom Jenks, Kimberly Campanello, Ryan Van Winkle & more. Admission is free.

The 2nd edition of Camaradefest , Steven Fowler's monster festival of poetry collaborations, takes place this coming Saturday 25 October in the Main Space at the Rich Mix  (35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA). Beginning at 12 noon and running until around 10pm, it will feature 100 poets presenting 50 brand new collaborative works. I'll be performing my collaboration with Nathan Jones , Liverpool-based writer, curator & producer, in the final session, starting at 9pm. Admission is free. Full Camaradefest II lineup below: 12noon John Clegg & Holly Corfield Carr Nick Murray & Aki Schilz Sarah Dawson & Robin Boothroyd Jonah Wilberg & Lucy Furlong Vera Chok & Sophie Herxheimer Jon Stone & Harry Wooler Paul Hawkins & Mali Clements Cali Dux & Simon Pomery Angus Sinclair & Laura Elliott ​Ross Sutherland & Thomas Bunstead 2pm George Szirtes & Carol Watts Gareth Rees & Gary Budden Robert Kiely & Doug Jone...

Organised and presented by Instituto Cervantes in Dublin, ISLA is a festival of literature now in its third year that focuses on writers from or with links to Ireland, Spain and Latin America. This year the programme of events runs over three days, between 17 and 19 October, and features 21 authors (including John Banville, Claire Keegan and Hugo Hamilton) engaging in a range of discussions and readings. There are also screenings of documentaries on Gabriel García Marquez and Octavio Paz. I'm participating in a reading & discussion with title 'Building Identities' taking place on the fist day of the festival, Friday 17 October - also featuring Donal Ryan and Anamaría Crowe Serrano and chaired by Philip Johnston of University College Dublin (UCD). We start at 6.15pm. The venue for all events is the Institute's Café Literario at Lincoln House, Lincoln Place, Dublin 2. Admission is free - but due to limited capacity the Institute encourages those interested to book...

Dublin 25/9/14 If I'm honest - and why wouldn't I be - I suspected the Cork gig would turn out to be the apex of this tour. On arrival in Dublin the six of us dispersed briefly to different locations and commitments, but this only acted as a welcome breather for what's undoubtedly turning out to be an intense if joyful overall experience. We returned refreshed the following afternoon to the Irish Writers' Centre to a welcoming environment and a well-organised performance space, despite the challenges of facilitating not only a couple of pieces making use of audiovisual backing and another with props (a reprisal of Aodan McCardle & Áilbhe Hines' performance from Derry) but also a panel discussion prior to the performances. The room was packed, in fact both rooms on the Centre's first floor were occupied throughout the event. Keen & prompting questions from our moderator Susan Tomaselli ensured any early stiffness in the discussion quickly evaporated, an...

Galway 21/9/14 It's always invigorating to alight in Galway and encounter its Atlantic air and backpacking energy. For the whole of this weekend in particular the city was bathed in sunshine and made being here feel at times too much like a holiday... We took advantage of our first performance-free evening to get together for a long meal in a Thai restaurant, where the round table format enabled communal conversation and banter and a cementing of relationships. The Galway Arts Centre proved an intimate venue for the third date in the tour - and whether it was because or despite of this or a complete coincidence, it was the scene for the most radically diverse presentation of work and approaches to collaboration - and a vigorous interrogation of performative poetics - so far. Ranging from Anamaría Crowe Serrano's & Elaine Cosgrove's passionate and resonant exploration of domestic violence to the loss-themed interactions between Eleanor Hooker & Sarah Hesketh to Pat...

Belfast 18/9/14 The six touring poets arrived in Belfast separately over the 24 hour period preceding the first event, and we quickly got to acclimatising to the travelling mode that awaited us for the next 10 days. A welcoming atmosphere during the first reading and its aftermath, facilitated as much by the eagerness of our guest poets to respond to the challenges of collaboration as by Stephen Connolly & Manuela Moser's excellent work in establishing a community of open minded poets over the past couple of years through The Lifeboat series of readings, was key. The Cube space at the Crescent Arts Centre with its huge black curtains as backdrop accentuated a sense of seriousness and weight running through the majority of the work presented here. Beyond a diversity in theme, it's the range of approaches to collaboration that I'm anticipating to be a preeminent feature of this tour - and we got off to a fascinating start. Following the five Belfast-based pairs, the cor...

The second issue of gorse , a wonderful print journal of literature edited in Dublin by Susan Tomaselli, was published last week and includes a new long poem of mine. gorse publishes high quality work in the form of essays, fiction, interviews, poetry, variations of these and much else. It's distinguished by top production values with beautiful cover art, extended knowledge of and interest in a diversity of writing traditions and movements, an experimentalist thrust, cosmopolitanism and wit combined with seriousness of attention, and an interrogative outlook - a confluence of dimensions generally lacking from other Ireland-based journals. Issue 2 also includes work by Claire-Louise Bennett, Matthew Jakubowski, Rob Doyle, Colm O'Shea, SJ Fowler, Dylan Brennan and Lies Van Gasse among others. My poem has title 'Civilisation's Golden Dawn: A Slide Show' and is composed out of specifically-written captions to old family photos of trips to Greece, with fragmen...