'this is no longer entertainment' reviewed in The Irish Times
A review of this is no longer entertainment appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday 26 December 2019. The review is by Gregory Betts, professor of English language & literature at Brock University, Ontario, Canada - who has recently served as Craig Dobbin Professor for Canadian Studies at University College Dublin.
My book is reviewed in juxtaposition with Kimberly Campanello's MOTHERBABYHOME as a means of exploring how "as the world transforms, so too must its poetry, disregarding tradition." The two books are presented as examples of writing that "gives up the nationalist illusion of commonality to expose the fault lines of a society," which is "particularly necessary in an age of complex social turbulence on the precipice of even further changes."
Commenting specifically on this is no longer entertainment, Betts states that "[it] uses a conceptual writing approach to illuminate fissures in our social fabric," and that the collage work underpinning it is connected to "the avant-garde history of similar experiments from Pablo Picasso to Brion Gysin, John Cage to musical sampling in contemporary hip-hop." Further on, he writes that the book "uses language to store a complex network of ideas about the age in which we live. Like the best of Ireland’s literary tradition – the canonical tradition of Swift, Wilde and Joyce – it also highlights the hypocrisies of our age." Concluding, he argues that "how we experience and perform language in Capitalism, is at the heart of Makris’s documentary."
You can read the full review on The Irish Times website.
The review has been highlighted by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine (Chicago), via their blog 'Harriet'.
Many thanks to Gregory Betts for his deeply considered reading of my book.
My book is reviewed in juxtaposition with Kimberly Campanello's MOTHERBABYHOME as a means of exploring how "as the world transforms, so too must its poetry, disregarding tradition." The two books are presented as examples of writing that "gives up the nationalist illusion of commonality to expose the fault lines of a society," which is "particularly necessary in an age of complex social turbulence on the precipice of even further changes."
Commenting specifically on this is no longer entertainment, Betts states that "[it] uses a conceptual writing approach to illuminate fissures in our social fabric," and that the collage work underpinning it is connected to "the avant-garde history of similar experiments from Pablo Picasso to Brion Gysin, John Cage to musical sampling in contemporary hip-hop." Further on, he writes that the book "uses language to store a complex network of ideas about the age in which we live. Like the best of Ireland’s literary tradition – the canonical tradition of Swift, Wilde and Joyce – it also highlights the hypocrisies of our age." Concluding, he argues that "how we experience and perform language in Capitalism, is at the heart of Makris’s documentary."
You can read the full review on The Irish Times website.
The review has been highlighted by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine (Chicago), via their blog 'Harriet'.
Many thanks to Gregory Betts for his deeply considered reading of my book.
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