Christodoulos Makris

Issue 130 of Poetry Ireland Review (April 2020) carries a review of  this is no longer entertainment . Written by David Toms, the review piece is titled 'Feeding The Engines' and in it my book is considered along with books by Matt Kirkham and Natasha Cuddington. Toms opens with a paragraph on Shoshana Zuboff's groundbreaking work  The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and in particular on her use of the term 'behaviour surplus', identified as 21st century capitalism's driving force and the internet's central product - which serves as an introduction to his discussion of my book. Writing about this is no longer entertainment  he argues that "the title itself is a stark warning, as strong as Zuboff's core argument" and calls the book "a sustained and at times terrifying glimpse of the world as it now exists". Later he writes: "We talk about the online and offline, although the line between one and the other - as Zuboff's work d...

On Friday 15 May I will present new poetry from current work-in-progress for the 13th edition of the online literary salon A Leap in the Dark - "a twice-weekly gathering best described as 'an online salon cold war bunker impro literary brains trust'." In the words of organiser David Collard : "A lifetime ago, on 29th February, I organised a ‘A Leap in the Dark’, a Dada cabaret staged in a dilapidated former Conservative Club in Paddington. The venue was unheated but there was plenty of whisky and cocoa and the performers all blazed with a hard gemlike flame... Such gatherings are now a thing of the future, but the same loose-knit group of writers and poets and musicians and performers all want to share their work with an audience and with each other, to spread some light and possibly even joy in these dark and difficult times. Because that’s something we can do, and something we all need to do, now and in the future, until the current crisis passes, and after t...