Christodoulos Makris

A new poem with title 'Lady Liberty with a deaths head visage...' is included in Paris Lit Up no. 4 , nominally published in 2016 but out just last month. This fourth edition of Paris Lit Up magazine - published by the Paris-based umbrella organisation of the same name that maintains an emphasis on transnational writers, artists and musicians - arrives, as the editors write in their foreword, at a crossroads: "as the world darkens with increasingly rigid identities, we ask ourselves how our creative endeavours can contest this narrowing vision". An answer appears in the notion of trans- ("transnational, transgressive, transitional, translational") which is the overall theme and title of the issue. My piece is included in one of two specially curated sections: Malik Crumpler & Pansy Maurer-Alvarez ( Poets Live ) and Jennifer K Dick ( Ivy Writers Paris ) invited a small selection of participants in their respective series to contribute to the issue.

It was a total pleasure and a privilege to work with Ailbhe & Steven as editor of this extraordinary book. My interventions were minimal, in truth, since the concept and execution of the work, despite or because of the presence of two individually strong poetic sensibilities, was of the highest order. Having witnessed this collaboration at its genesis while we toured together in September 2014  I was hardly surprised by this, and I'm very proud to be associated with this work. Subcritical Tests , a book of poetry by Ailbhe Darcy & SJ Fowler, with cover design and interior illustrations by Niall McCormack, is now out. Subcritical Tests is the first title published by gorse editions. "The nearness of nuclear holocaust, always just one clumsy accident away, forms an entry point into this record of a friendship. The poems in Subcritical Tests stubbornly make connections, ever conscious of the impending threat of annihilation. Oblique, modern, lyrical, humorous, thes