SJ Fowler in collaboration with Provokief (piano) performing my poem 'Sincerely' - published in the anthology Herbarium(Capsule Press, 2011, ed. James Wilkes) as the entry for Gravel Root. Filmed during Poetry Parnassus.
The second issue of gorse , a wonderful print journal of literature edited in Dublin by Susan Tomaselli, was published last week and includes a new long poem of mine. gorse publishes high quality work in the form of essays, fiction, interviews, poetry, variations of these and much else. It's distinguished by top production values with beautiful cover art, extended knowledge of and interest in a diversity of writing traditions and movements, an experimentalist thrust, cosmopolitanism and wit combined with seriousness of attention, and an interrogative outlook - a confluence of dimensions generally lacking from other Ireland-based journals. Issue 2 also includes work by Claire-Louise Bennett, Matthew Jakubowski, Rob Doyle, Colm O'Shea, SJ Fowler, Dylan Brennan and Lies Van Gasse among others. My poem has title 'Civilisation's Golden Dawn: A Slide Show' and is composed out of specifically-written captions to old family photos of trips to Greece, with fragmen...
Sabne Raznik, a poet, book reviewer and freelance writer based in Kentucky in the US, has posted a review of my three books on Yahoo! Voices under the heading 'The Work of Christodoulos Makris' . It's a generally positive response to them, particularly to Muses Walk ("With it, one begins to see that Makris is an important poet, not just for sleepy Ireland, but perhaps for the world," she writes) but not without expressing some reservations along the way. I must note a couple of factual inaccuracies: the project for which Muses Walk was originally conceived and made is an international one, called 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street'; and, much as I wish it were true, there has been no recent trip to Greece .
My poem 'The Group' - a version of Rilke's 'Die Gruppe' - appears in ROPES, the annual journal from the students of the MA in Literature and Publishing of NUI Galway. Many thanks to Thomas Brezing for his help with the German. ROPES was launched on 23 April at Galway Town Hall as part of the Cúirt Festival of Literature. As usual I was in Galway for much of Cúirt week and went to many excellent readings. I returned with rough drafts for new poems and a stack of new books and journals...
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