It Reeks of Radio (BLR Editions, 2023)
I'm excited to announce that my fifth full-length book of poetry It Reeks of Radio, a hybrid poem incorporating documentary text and visuals composed through my commissioned engagement with RTÉ Radio archives held at University College Dublin (UCD), will be published on 26 September 2023.
Especially exciting is the fact that It Reeks of Radio is the inaugural title from BLR Editions, a new imprint connected to the annual journal Belfield Literary Review - a joint UCD / Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) publication venture.
And I'm very pleased that the book will be launched during WORDFFEVER, a UCD one day creative writing conference taking place at MoLI on 26 September, as part of which I will be in conversation about the book with this year's UCD / Arts Council of Ireland Writer in Residence, Victoria Kennefick.
Further details below:
About the Book:
It Reeks of Radio is a book-length poem composed entirely from fragments of communication around historical (pre-1980s) RTÉ Radio programming - the result of poet Christodoulos Makris' year-long engagement with the RTÉ Radio Scripts Collection held in the UCD Archives. It draws several interweaving threads that include the mechanics of historical correspondence, power dynamics within Ireland's state broadcaster and across to writers, contributors, the public, government and the BBC, attitudes to gender and nationality, artists' work and pay conditions, and more. Also embedded in the poem is commentary on its own composition through parallels found in the archival material. Declining to offer easy conclusions, It Reeks of Radio is a poetic response to motifs and undercurrents in relations between public and private at the level of institution, while proposing extrapolations across time to the current moment.
Context:
It Reeks of Radio presents work completed during the period of the Joseph M. Hassett Creativity Bursary for 2021-22. This annual bursary is supported by UCD alumnus and Yeats scholar Dr Joseph M. Hassett and by the UCD College of Arts and Humanities Support Fund. The recipient works on a project of their choice linking their contemporary creative practice with UCD’s Cultural Heritage Collections.
For this bursary Christodoulos chose to work on the RTÉ Radio Drama and Variety Scripts Collection at UCD Archives. UCD Archives preserves the papers of Irish public figures and the records of significant organisations such as political parties, trades unions, professional and cultural associations and sporting bodies. These collections are a critical and a creative resource for projects associated with the history of the first half of the 20th century in Ireland.
It Reeks of Radio is published by BLR Editions at UCD, a brand new imprint associated with Belfield Literary Review, an annual journal which has grown out of the creative writing community in University College Dublin and is co-published with Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI).
Exhibition:
It Reeks of Radio will be accompanied by a unique exhibition of panels that visually contextualise the project and bring it to the walls of the Newman Building (Arts Building) at UCD. The exhibition will open on 27 September 2023 and will be in situ for a minimum of one year.
Launch:
It Reeks of Radio will be launched on 26 September 2023 as part of WORDFEVER - a UCD one day creative writing conference taking place at MoLI, where Christodoulos will be in conversation with Victoria Kennefick, UCD / Arts Council of Ireland Writer in Residence.
Conference programme:
9.45 AM - 11.15 AM Kaleidoscopes: PhD Panel with CW PhD students
11.30 AM - 12.45 PM Into the Wind: Alumni Reading with Sarah Gilmartin, Aoife Fitzpatrick, Brendan Casey, Lauren MacKenzie
12.45 - 1.30PM The Green Room: Christodoulos Makris in conversation with Victoria Kennefick
2.30 - 3.30PM A Scattering: Staff Reading & Panel with Sarah Moss, Ian Davidson, Eireann Lorsung, and Priscilla Morris
4.00 - 5.00PM Keynote: Campbell McGrath and Victoria Kennefick with Paul Perry
The conference is supported by the School of English, Drama, and Film, UCD and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Acknowledgements:
The generous support of the Joseph M. Hassett Bursary made this publication possible, and we extend thanks also to UCD Foundation, UCD Library and UCD College of Arts and Humanities, especially College Principals Professor Sarah Prescott (2016-2022) and Professor Regina Uí Chollatáin (2022- ). We are grateful to Kate Manning and the staff at UCD Archives for facilitating access to materials and acknowledge the RTÉ Radio Drama and Variety Scripts Collection, held at UCD Archives, as the source for this creative work. Further support from Emer Beesley, Professor John Brannigan, Lucy Collins, Katherine McSharry, Simon O’Connor and designer David Donohoe has helped to bring this project to fruition.
* I would like to extend my very special thanks to Lucy Collins for managing the publication of It Reeks of Radio, and to Emer Beesley for proposing and managing the exhibition in the Newman Building. Special thanks also to David Donohoe for his amazing design and production work which brought my visual compositional ideas to print and in the form of such a beautiful publication object. Thanks to Paul Perry for the invitation to launch the book during WORDFEVER. And many thanks finally to Colin Graham and Kimberly Campanello for their support at the very outset of this project. *
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