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'Capital' at Irish Museum of Modern Art

On Saturday 5 September I will present a new long poem with title 'Capital' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).

This is part of a programme of events for The People's Pavilion installation, a public outdoor space located on the museum's front lawn where people can meet safely in specially designed social distancing circles.

From the event description:

'Capital' is a polyphonic poem composed of fragments of text from unattributed reviews of establishments on Talbot Street, publicly available on Google Maps. It has its roots in Makris’s longstanding interest in the shifts in language use, communication and identity brought about by digital media, and their implication on poetic discourse.

The poem maps the street through the kind of public-private writing prevalent online (the reviews often stray into personal anecdote). Its documentary and fragmentary nature also responds to the early post-Covid conditions, our toggling between 'real' and online geographies, and the ongoing uncertainty regarding the navigation of physical environments. The poem offers a representation of our transitive relationship with urban spaces during this period, with our perception of the city as partly digital and suspended in the recent past having been enhanced, something that is reflected in the reviews, themselves slightly out of date or skewed.

Talbot Street was chosen as the site of the poem because it is a street Makris walks regularly after arriving in the city centre by train. Despite becoming a habitual route, the street remained essentially unknown to him, serving primarily as a conduit. It was only through navigating the street on Google Maps that he uncovered the wealth of energy, tumult and experience present in its establishments, the street revealing itself in the process as a microcosm of contemporary Dublin and particularly of its overlapping multicultural and transactive-capitalist aspects.

The reading starts at 3pm and admission is free. Due to current social distancing regulations places are limited; to book a place please email andrea.marrinan@imma.ie.



Comments

Unknown said…
Congratulations - It's a real joy to hear that.

I must say I researched some of your works after your workshop at Confey College a long while back and I really do love them. Just wanted to pop down here and say a huge thanks for that, and for keeping poetry alive. I hope to be releasing my own soon, once I begin writing frequently. The workshop definitely sparked my long lost interest and I'm glad that it's back for good. Wish you all the best with any future plans and works!

Sasha
21 September 2020 at 20:21
Christodoulos Makris said…
Thanks for dropping by Sasha. Such a pleasure to learn all of that! Hope to see your work out & about real soon! CM
22 September 2020 at 11:01
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