Christodoulos Makris

Wurm Press is delighted to mark the publication of The Architecture of Chance by Christodoulos Makris with a launch party on Wednesday 8th April 2015 at The Black Sheep (downstairs function room) 61 Capel St, Dublin 1 from 6.30pm launch speech by Maurice Scully music from i am niamh poetry happenings discounted books nibbles ALL WELCOME

Issue 3 of gorse , edited by Susan Tomaselli [ my editorial contribution begins from No. 4, due out in September] and with cover art once again by Niall McCormack, is now out. Copies can be ordered directly , while the journal is also available through selected bookshops . The issue will be launched on Wednesday 15 April at The Workman's Club ( The Vintage Room ), 18 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2, with readings from Cal Doyle, Darragh McCausland, Paula McGrath and Michael Naghten Shanks. Below is the full list of contents - with links to selected previews: [Editorial] Whale in the Moon When It’s Clear [Interview] ‘At Home in the Unheimlich,’ Deborah Levy by Andrew Gallix [Essays] ‘Initiations: On Grisey’s Music’ by Liam Cagney ‘A Writer’s Guide to the Dialectical Landscapes of Dublin’ by Therese Cox ‘Four Bridges/Four Exercises in Re-Construction’ by Adrian Duncan ‘A Fine House, The Irish Their Bungalows’ by Oliver Farry ‘Stasis’ by Ian Maleney ‘The Cardina...

My new book  The Architecture of Chance is now out  from Wurm Press : Christodoulos Makris’ second full collection, blends painstaking poetic craft with the accidental hazards of found text and overheard sample. As challenging as it is accessible, these poems comment wittily yet unsparingly on the cultural, economic and political textures of twenty-first century life. "A forerunner, in Irish poetry and Irish poetry publishing." - Harry Clifton, The Irish Times "We can distinguish two types of cityscape: those which are formed deliberately, and others which develop unintentionally. The former derive from the artistic will that is realised in squares, vistas, arrangements of buildings, and effects of perspective which Baedeker generally illuminates with a star. The latter on the other hand come into being without having been planned in advance. They are not compositions like Pariser Platz or La Concorde which owe their existence to a single architectural ...

The Trinity Journal of Literary Translation , in association with The Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin and the Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Association , present the Dublin launch of  Centrifugal: Contemporary Poetry from Dublin and Guadalajara  - a bilingual anthology of reciprocal translations / re-interpretations / versions of the work of 7 pairs of poets from the two cities. The book is published by Mexico's EBL-Cielo Abierto publishing house in conjunction with CONACULTA, Mexico's National Council for Culture and the Arts, and is co-edited by Ángel Ortuño (Guadalajara) and Christodoulos Makris (Dublin). Introduced by Christodoulos Makris, and also featuring contributions from Alan Jude Moore, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Catherine Walsh, John Kearns and Kit Fryatt, the event will include readings from the anthology alongside discussions on the range of approaches employed in rendering the work of each partner poet into English. Tuesday 10 Februa...

I'm delighted to announce a series of talks from a diverse group of contemporary poets discussing their writing process. Produced in partnership with Fingal Libraries , these talks / presentations will take place in various library branches over four weeks in February and March 2015. All events are free admission and start at 6.30pm, and will include Q&A sessions. Full details below: A series consisting of four events, each featuring two outstanding contemporary poets writing out of different poetic traditions (e.g. lyrical, cosmopolitan, experimental, performance) discussing the compositional process behind one of their poems. All events will include a Q&A session. This is a unique opportunity for poetry audiences, writers, students and general readers to gain an insight into the diversity of methods and range of approaches towards writing. Tuesday 17 February 2015 Baldoyle Library Maurice Scully & Enda Coyle-Greene Wednesday 25 February 2015 Do...

I was honoured and delighted to receive an invitation from Susan Tomaselli to join gorse  as poetry editor - an invitation I wasted no time in accepting. As I'd written  elsewhere , I consider gorse a unique and refreshing presence in the Irish literary landscape, with an outlook, temperament and set of interests that resonate deeply with mine. Getting the chance to contribute to it in an editorial capacity and to work towards strengthening the considerable impact it has already made in just two issues is a hugely exciting challenge, full of possibilities. It's hard to specify what kind of poetry I'm looking for, because above all I want to publish poetry I didn't know I was looking for. Likely to interest me, though, is writing that plays with boundaries of form, language and genre, that's aware of social, political, technological and cultural developments, that's interrogative and outward-looking, conceptually-rigorous and witty. We are beginning to work ...

As part of the opening of Thomas Brezing's exhibition/installation 'The Road is Paved with Good Intentions'  at the Droichead Arts Centre on Wednesday 14 January 2015, I will be doing a collaborative performance with the artist in his 'Carpet Man' persona: "Carpet Man is an ongoing performance-based project running since 2011, revolving around a persona adopted by Thomas Brezing. Carpet Man has appeared in derelict houses, a snow-covered mountain, an abandoned pool, a beach, an old shop unit, a vandalised warehouse, a forest and several other locations. A short film documenting his journeys was produced in 2013. Christodoulos Makris is a poet, editor and curator particularly interested in experimental/innovative/conceptual writing, often the result of collaborations. His essay on Brezing's Carpet Man project appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of Visual Artists Ireland newsletter. For this performance, he will engage with Carpet Man by responding to t...

Belleville Park Pages is a publication printed on paper every two weeks, while also publishing various online pieces each month. Edited from London and Paris by James Bird and Will Cox, and currently stocked in 29 bookshops in 9 countries (including Books Upstairs and The Winding Stair in Dublin - as well as Foyles in London, Shakespeare & Co in Paris and City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco among others) each print issue is a hand-folded and hand-packaged creamy A3 broadsheet. Page 30 , published last week, includes my poem 'Consequences'. My thanks to Will for seeking it out for publication. (There are actually four different editions of No. 30, each with a different festive recipe amongst the poetry and short stories from guest chefs from restaurants in Oslo, kitchens in London and home pantries in Ludlow.) You can buy individual copies of Belleville Park Pages  at £3.00, or take out a subscription .

Issue 3 of online journal  Colony , published last month, focuses on the theme of Magic and includes my piece 'Heaney after Rauschenberg'. My thanks to poetry editor Kimberly Campanello for featuring it within what is a strong poetry section, also including excellent work by Paul Casey, Aodán McCardle, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Ryan Van Winkle. 'Heaney after Rauschenberg' is a piece of erasure, which reduces Seamus Heaney's collection Death of a Naturalist to its four-letter words, in order of their appearance in the text. Here's Robert Rauschenberg talking about his 1953 work 'Erased de Kooning Drawing':

In the course of my participation in the 3rd ISLA Festival in October, I was interviewed by Eleanor Molloy at the Dámaso Alonso Library of the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin for the Institute's YouTube channel: