Christodoulos Makris

Last summer I travelled to Stuttgart on an invitation from Dr Jessica Bundschuh of the Department of English Literatures and Cultures at The University of Stuttgart, where over Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June 2025 I led a series of generative poetry workshop sessions in partnership with Cork-based poet Molly Twomey for around 60 participants composed of University students and 5th grade students from Dillmann Gymnasium. The title of our collaborative workshop project was 'The Mediated Self' and it consisted of three individually-led sessions each: mine focusing on sampling, collaborative writing, ekphrasis, collaging, and related poetics. My session 'Find a Pop Icon' in particular, spread over two days, was the source of much discussion, amusement, tumult and creative engagement from the students. My reading of the 132-line long collaborative, communal 'exquisite corpse' poem in its entirety, which I set for the class at the outset and which was contributed to b...

This spring I will lead an 8-week course with title 'writing as a reader / reading as a writer.' The course is offered as part of the Irish Writers Centre Academy 's Spring 2026 programme. This is an online course. Beginning on Thursday 5 March 2026, it will run weekly between 6.30pm - 8.30pm Dublin time. Limited spaces available. Book your place here . Full course information on the IWC website , and below. Course Summary: As poets and writers we are first and foremost readers mediating external material, text and otherwise, in the process of making new work. And as readers operating in the digital age we are increasingly aware of the creative potential of reading and repurposing. In ‘writing as a reader / reading as a writer’ participants will exercise their capacity to read creatively, critically and intuitively, and to employ source material directly towards literary composition. This is a generative course incorporating regular writing tasks underpinned by carefully se...

I was happy to accept an invitation from Poetry Ireland to host an INSIGHTS masterclass this autumn. 'our sullen art: the poet after AI,' my contribution to this occasional series, will take place on Thursday 16 October 2025, and bookings are now open . INSIGHTS is Poetry Ireland's masterclass series, "led by some of the most respected voices in contemporary poetry in Ireland, and designed to support poets at all stages of their careers." Places are limited. The session will take place online via Zoom, with participants able to join from anywhere. See basic information and masterclass description below  as announced by Poetry Ireland , including booking link. Full details here . Poet Christodoulos Makris hosts an online writing masterclass, our sullen art: the poet after AI , for poets at all stages of their careers on Thursday, 16th October. Thursday 16 October 2025, 6.30pm - 8.30pm Online (via Zoom) Tickets: €25 Reserve a Spot Here.   About the Masterclass How d...

I'm very pleased to be partnering with Poetry Ireland on two connected initiatives taking place this summer and autumn: I will be offering a guided tour (in person) of the exhibition Is this a poem? which I devised and curated and which runs at Museum of Literature Ireland until 21 July 22 September 2024; and I will be leading a 6-week (online) course with title 'Poetry in the Contemporary World'. Full details below. You can book a place on the tour and/or the course through the relevant links. /// Christodoulos Makris - Is this a poem? Curator Tour Saturday, July 13, 10:30am - 12:30pm In Person: Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 Cost: €25 [BOOK HERE] Join Christodoulos at MoLI for a special guided tour in which he will introduce and discuss the individual items comprising Is this a poem? He will explore and speak about the concepts underpinning the exhibition and how we experience and view poetry. Devised and curated by Christodou...

A new piece of mine in collaboration with visual artist Niamh McCann and theatre-maker Richard Walsh appears in  Exit. Music. Lights.,  a publication from the Numbered Editions imprint with commissioned contributions from artists across forms. Designed by Clare Bell  and released in late 2022,  Exit. Music. Lights.  features contributions from a group of visual artists, writers and theatre-makers exploring theatre, performance and the idea of the ‘black out’ in a variety of ways. It's the second in a series of Numbered Editions, a Dublin-based experimental imprint  co-edited by Nathan O’Donnell and Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll . Numbered Editions is described as "an occasional platform for writing by artists across artforms," and it is interested in points of intersection. Operating on the principle of serialisation, it publishes neither books nor magazines but something in between. (I was pleased also to be part of the first title in the series, figure | gr...

Following the successful run of my Irish Writers Centre course 'Something Borrowed Something New' in Spring 2020 - which began in-person at the centre before shifting almost seamlessly to Zoom for obvious reasons - and which I'm delighted to report has led to a participant's work recently being picked up for publication by a Chicago press - I'm pleased to be leading a new course with title 'Against Originality' for the Irish Writers Centre's Autumn 2022 Programme. You can book a place on 'Against Originality' through the centre . This is an online course so participants can book and join from anywhere , and it is suitable for all levels of experience. Start date is Thursday 13 October 2022, and duration is 8 weeks, in 2-hour weekly sessions (6.30 - 8.30pm Dublin time). See below, or the Irish Writers Centre's course page , for course details and endorsements. Against Originality with Christodoulos Makris: This course facilitates the creation...

I very much look forward to this year's edition of the Belfast Book Festival, taking place 10-19 June, and in which I will be participating in a range of ways. Especially since my scheduled participation in 2020, arranged by a different programming team, unfortunately did not happen due to the festival's cancellation that year. So my contribution to the  Belfast Book Festival 2022 takes three different forms: 1/ Reading and Conversation -  Literary Collage With Sophie Herxheimer & Christodoulos Makris : This intimate event will query the potential of the many sources of found and discarded language as source texts for the creation of new literary material. Come along and join poets Sophie Herxheimer and Christodoulos Makris for an evening of readings and conversation. Wednesday 15 June 2022 | 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM | Tickets: Pay What You Want – recommended price £7  | The Crescent Arts Centre 2/ Workshop -  Text As Material: Remake Reuse Recycle With Christodoulos...

I was pleased to be invited to the Carlow Writer-in-Residence programme, as part of which I will deliver a series of workshops over July and August 2020. The programme is managed by the Carlow County Council Arts Office in partnership with Carlow College , and has been running for the past few years with contributions from writers and artists working across disciplines - poets, novelists, short story writers, essayists, filmmakers, dramatists, songwriters. The workshops are administered by the residency organisers and are directed at members of writers groups in Carlow. Given ongoing restrictions associated with Covid-19 my activities will be delivered online, and in the course we will focus on language as material rather than as conveyor of meaning or message, privileging observational, appropriative, responsive and participative approaches to literary practice over notions of originality or genius. My thanks to Sinead Dowling, Carlow Co Co Arts Officer, and Dr Derek Coyle at Car...

I look forward to taking part in the 9th annual Doolin Writers Weekend (24-26 January 2020) . Taking place at Hotel Doolin (Doolin, Co Clare) the festival is this year guest-curated by Susan Tomaselli who has charged it with a definite experimental vibe. The festival artist-in-residence is sound, film & performance artist  Vicky Langan , and there will be readings, seminars, workshops, music/DJ sessions and open mics across the weekend featuring a host of excellent writers, poets, editors and publishers such as Darran Andreson, Patrick Chapman, Alice Lyons, Lucy Collins, Jessica Traynor, Gavin Corbett and many others. My contribution to the festival is twofold: First, on Saturday 25 January (2-5pm) I'll be giving a workshop with focus on sampling in poetry : "In music composition, sampling is the act of taking a portion of sound and reusing it as an element of a new recording. Similarly, poets at the cutting edge of the practice increasingly employ their critical...

Beginning Thursday 5 March 2020 I will be teaching a weekly course (duration 8 weeks) with title  'Something Borrowed, Something New'  at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin: "This is a course encouraging innovative approaches to writing: responding directly to our contemporary content-sharing culture, it will explore in practical terms ways in which this is altering all forms of literature. As a direct consequence of the superabundance of readily accessible text and other documentation, the nature of literary composition is undergoing radical transformation, with the contemporary writer increasingly relying on their reading, selection and manipulation skills. Participants on this course - which is nominally geared towards the advanced, but is suitable for inquisitive writers of all levels of experience - will explore approaches that make use of pre-existing material with an application to poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Issues relating to copyright and attribution...

I'm happy to have been  invited back to Kildare Readers Festival. For this year's (10th) edition I will run a workshop with title 'Persona Poetry' : "Participants will be guided by Christodoulos Makris to make use of public texts to compose poetry in the personae of a range of current figures. This is a fun and interactive workshop, with the techniques employed adaptable to writing other kinds of poetry. Participants will also create an 'exquisite corpse' (a communally composed poem). Christodoulos is acclaimed as one of the leading practitioners of experimental poetry. All levels of experience welcome." The workshop takes place on Saturday 19 October at 2pm , at the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare. Participation is free, but booking is required. You can book a place here . Workshop participants will have the opportunity to share the poetry they produced in  'Hot Off The Press' , an event directly following the workshop wh...

For the second installment of 'a heap of language', an ongoing event series organised between Paper Visual Art Journal and the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) , I will lead a 'Transcription Writing' workshop where participants will engage with public language towards making and publishing new work. 4pm, Wednesday 29 May 2019, Goethe-Institut , 37 Merrion Square East, Dublin 2. Places are limited, and registration is required ( you can register here  - update 23/5/19: booked out ). The workshop will involve a short walk with the transcription activity taking place outdoors, in a covered space. - 'a heap of language #002: radical publishing'  also includes a number of contributors speaking about radical (artists', small press, activist, and samizdat) publishing, followed by the launch of a publication assembled by current students of the MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World, collaboratively produced in respons...

On Friday 29 September I will give a talk & performance at 'My Story: My Words' - a symposium on Language and Migration at NUI Galway. Developed under the Irish Research Council's 'New Foundations' scheme in partnership with the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and organised by Anne O'Connor and Andrea Ciribuco of The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at NUI Galway, the symposium brings together scholars and practitioners in the fields of translation, new media, visual art, film, theatre and poetry, and will run for the full day in the Hardiman Research Building. The title of my talk is 'Travelling Light: Shedding Poetry's National Baggage', and will consist of fragments from an essay I've been re-working which considers poetry from the position of the trans- or post-national mind, interspersed with my own poetry. In the run up to the symposium I was interviewed by Andrea Ciribuco on my writing and its relation to themes that ...

We're in Belfast for Compass Lines #2 , where I'll be in conversation with Miriam Gamble and Nerys Williams, and where the poets will present their collaboration City of Two Suns , specially commissioned for the event and published that day by the Irish Writers Centre. In addition, earlier in the day they will deliver a joint writing workshop in the Ulster Museum to a group composed of participants in various existing writing classes in Belfast. Compass Lines is a writers’ exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing. Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts Centre as partner venue. Compass Line...

On Monday 14 March I'll be giving a talk at York St John University as part of the Faculty of Arts  visiting speaker programme, for which "artists and curators come to YSJ to give one-off artist talks, lead focussed tutorial and critique sessions or work alongside a full-time academic member of staff to design and deliver a project or module." My thanks to  Lucy O'Donnell  for the invitation. I'll be speaking on the interconnected strands of my practice - compositional, editorial & curatorial - with various visual aids and material as suggested further reading. With that in mind (and also looking ahead to a forthcoming event next month) here's James King & Ellen Factor performing at the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry in 2014 as part of Yes But Are We Enemies :  

Compass Lines is a writers’ exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing. Compass Lines aims to encourage artistic fusion and integrate a sometimes fragmented audience, geographically and otherwise, through the strategy of combining writers with various concerns and backgrounds. Eschewing their comfort zones and usual patterns of working presents a diversion and a challenge to the writers, and a way of instigating discussions about ideas of process and place that reside in contemporary writing and which are often ignored through traditional views of literature. Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts C...

This morning @c_makris led a writing workshop with 5th year students from St Joseph's School, Rush, in Rush library #worldhomelessday — Fingal Co. Libraries (@fingallibraries) October 10, 2013 As part of the workshop students composed messages to a fictional runaway from popular culture, from various perspectives #shesleavinghome — Fingal Co. Libraries (@fingallibraries) October 10, 2013 Some of these messages coming up... #worldhomelessday — Fingal Co. Libraries (@fingallibraries) October 10, 2013 "I don’t know where you are or what you have done to yourself but I really miss you. Pls text me back when you get dis" #worldhomelessday — Fingal Co. Libraries (@fingallibraries) October 10, 2013 "You’re probably scared to come back now because of what people are going to say to you" #shesleavinghome #worldhomelessday — Fingal Co. Libraries (@fingallibraries) October 10, 2013 "Remember I’m your best friend so when your sad Im sa...

For my final involvement with UpStart's Granby Park project I'll be running this collaborative writing workshop under the auspices of Trade School Dublin. Trade School is a non-traditional learning community that runs on barter, and which currently operates in 48 locations (cities) around the world. Renga is a form of collaborative poetry that originated in Japan in the 11th century, in which a three line verse is followed by a two line verse then a three line verse and so on. Participants will be introduced to the basic elements of the practice, and will work together to produce a chain of linked verses. To ensure a place at the workshop, scheduled for Sunday 15 September at 12.30pm , you can sign up  at Trade School Dublin . Don't forget to bring along your barter items!

Great Poets Steal: a collaborative writing workshop with Christodoulos Makris Blanchardstown Library, Dublin 15 2pm, Saturday 20 April 2013 "The act of choosing and reframing tells us as much about ourselves as a story about our mother’s cancer operation" - Kenneth Goldsmith , 'Uncreative Writing' Its concept stolen from Steven Fowler's Patchwork Renga workshop conducted at the Poetry Library in London last June, and its title from the famous (mis)quote attributed to TS Eliot, this collaborative writing workshop aims to exercise the faculties of selecting and connecting text. My intention is to encourage a lively environment in which participants will work together towards composing a series of poems out of material 'borrowed' from the shelves of Blanchardstown Library. (In the first part all participants will go hunting among the library shelves and steal lines of their choice out of books of their choice from predetermined sections of the libr...

As part of the Poetry Parnassus UK Tour , which sees some of the poets who participated in Poetry Parnassus take part in events at different locations around the UK, I'll be at the Derry-Londonderry Clipper Festival this coming Thursday and Friday (5-6 July). Yachts and crew competing in the Clipper 11-12 International Yacht Race started arriving in Derry-Londonderry on 29 June at the end of the transatlantic leg of the race, and the city welcomes them with a 10-day festival . Part of the festival programme is the 'Songs of the Sea' event, hosted by the Verbal Arts Centre, which features sessions with thirteen Poetry Parnassus poets (Imruh Bakari, Maureen Roberts, Andra Simons, Dhabiya Khamis, Selina Marsh, Saradha Soobrayen, Kate Kilalea, Gerður Kristny, Soleiman Adel Guemar, Zahir Al-Ghafri, Adbullahi Botan Hassan, Rocío Cerón and myself) who represent nations with close links to the sea. For this I'll be doing a 1-hour workshop on 5 July, right beside where the ...