Christodoulos Makris

Earlier this month I contributed a performative paper at the international conference 'Poetry's Environments' organised and hosted by  Poetry@Leeds  at The University of Leeds. The conference took place over three days (9-11 June 2026) at Cloth Court Hall in Leeds city centre and the University of Leeds campus. Convened by a team headed by Kimberly Campanello , Professor of Poetry and Director of Poetry@Leeds,  'Poetry's Environments' aimed to "consider poetry that addresses the natural environment and the environments in which poetry is written, experienced, performed, preserved, and studied" by bringing together "international poets, critics, translators, archivists, activists, textual editors, digital specialists, literary professionals, and individuals, groups and organisations involved in poetry and its environments". My contribution was part of a panel called 'Marks & Materials 1' which also included readings and presentati...

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...

On Friday 21 November 2025 I performed a live hour-long version of Chapter 11: November from my ongoing durational project DIAL , this time in collaboration just with Keith Lindsay on electronics and live radio feedback. The performance took place in The Depot, The Complex Arts Centre’s large warehouse performance space, and it was part of Kirkos' takeover of The Depot Sessions . Kirkos is a music group from Dublin, as well as the operator of a DIY venue with a radically open approach to programming.  The Complex is the only multi-disciplinary arts centre in Dublin's north inner city, combining seventeen studios, a large warehouse performance space and a gallery. * A four-and-a-half-hour live extravaganza with performances of various kinds and durations happening at times simultaneously within The Depot, this was a wonderfully conceived and delivered event with a borderless, communal, quasi-anarchic, and ego-free vibe not often encountered in Dublin, taking its cue from the...

I had a wonderfully intense time in New York City in the first half of January, facilitated by a formal residency at Irish Arts Center awarded to me through a two-part cross-Atlantic residency programme led by St John's Theatre & Arts Centre, Listowel, Co Kerry. The core component of the residency was an opportunity to work further on my next poetry manuscript using the space and facilities at the Center, located on 11th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood in Manhattan, while feeding off the energy, sounds, images and the general tumult, urgency and creativity of New York City. While my time there was short I was able to add some new elements to the manuscript, but more importantly to begin to think of it and start editing in structural, macro terms. I have for a long time now recognised that I write or make hybrid-form work in book- or project-length cycles, rather than in shorter, standard poem-length forms, even though those cycles are sometimes composed of link...

My essay on the making of the long poem that constitutes my most recent book  It Reeks of Radio  (BLR Editions, 2023) appears in the latest issue No. 141 of Poetry Ireland Review . Commissioned by the issue's guest editor,  Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe , my essay broadly considers the background interests that led to my decision to work with radio archives - and specifically with the archived correspondence around historical broadcasts on RTÉ Radio rather than the radio scripts themselves - my practical and compositional working process, and the considerations that led to the poem embedding a visual dimension and the result taking the form of a book. The concluding paragraph offers brief commentary on the tensions in the relationship between poetry - an artform that at its keenest exists in the hyper-present - and archival documents, and consequently on the concept of commemoration through poetry, as well as the democratising potential of public media, while inviting each reade...

I'm very happy that two poems from my book Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document appear in the Winter 2023 issue of Poetry Wales . And I'm particularly pleased that an abridged version of a new essay of mine with title 'Just Your Imagination: The Case of the Absent Elusive Irish Avant-Garde' is also published in the issue. Founded in 1965 and currently edited by Zoë Brigley , Poetry Wales  is the national poetry magazine of Wales. It publishes contemporary poetry, features and reviews in its triannual print and digital magazine, and maintains an interest in translation and in local and national identities in a global context. Poetry Wales is open to tradition and experiment, publishing poetry from a wide range of approaches. My poems 'the stooges' and 'ruthlessly', taken from Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document (Veer, 2023) , are among new poetry by over 40 poets from across the world printed in the issue. And among its features  Poetry Wales ...

The Old Physics Theatre at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) was nicely full for the launch of my fifth book of poetry  It Reeks of Radio  (BLR Editions)  on 26 September 2023, where I was in public conversation with this year's UCD / Arts Council of Ireland Writer in Residence, Victoria Kennefick. It was lovely to see many old and new friends and colleagues attend what was a lunchtime event on a weekday. Victoria's astute reading of the book, her skillful hosting of the conversation and her probing questions facilitated a dive into several of the strands explored in the book. I was happy to read excerpts and respond to questions from the audience. photo: Nessa O'Mahony The following day, a 14-panel exhibition that visually contextualises the book and overall project was installed on the walls of Newman Building (Arts Building) at University College Dublin. The exhibition was proposed and managed by Emer Beesley, Marketing And Communications Manager at UCD College ...

Such a pleasure to take part in the first live event organised by Mirror Lamp Press last Friday evening at The Complex Arts Centre in north inner city Dublin, where I performed a set constructed around my poem 'Bandsalat (Verse Chorus Verse)' - a poem specially commissioned for the journal's inaugural issue in April 2021. Mirror Lamp Press is an online journal exploring the intersection of art and literature. Edited by Gwen Burlington and Eoghan McIntyre, it has already amassed an impressive list of contributors across artforms. As well as celebrating publication of its eighth issue which went live earlier that day, the event sought to showcase writing from previous issues and presented screenings of four commissioned audiovisual essays. My poem 'Bandsalat (Verse Chorus Verse)' was composed in response to the editors' brief of writing on an object of my choice that brought some kind of relief or happiness during a time of prolonged home confinement and force...

I recently became aware that my essay 'Shedding Poetry's National Baggage',  commissioned for and published on the online platform  Versopolis Review  (European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture) in January 2018 , has vanished without trace, warning or explanation. The internet is of course full of broken links and disappeared material, but the Versopolis project continues to be active and supported by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme, with the platform stating that its website is a document of the project's activities since its inception in 2014. Following this development, and given the fact that the essay was fairly cited and discussed on its original publication, and is being taught in Universities and creative writing modules, I have decided to make it available again below, unaltered and in full: --- Shedding Poetry’s National Baggage: Eight Fragments 1. In February 2015 I received two separate calls in a single morning: one from a national ar...

Note:  With several scheduled activities postponed or cancelled outright due to COVID-19, I just wanted to place a note of thanks here to those people and organisations who have honoured or have committed to honouring our existing arrangements in whatever ways they can, or who are providing concrete, continued and true support through  the commissioning of work and in other forms . It's a deeper pleasure than ever, and maybe even a privilege, to be making and releasing new work during this time: I'm happy to report that two poems from a cycle I've been developing over the past couple of years were published on Berfrois earlier this week. Berfrois is a literary-intellectual online magazine updated daily, published by Pendant Publishing in London and edited by Russell Bennetts. Persistently and unashamedly internationalist and wide-ranging, it is , in the words of Don Share, senior editor at Poetry (Chicago) magazine, "lightning fast, yet deeply aware". T...

"My story is a hidden one, you cannot see it written on my face as I walk on the streets." I am proud to be contributing to Correspondences : an anthology to call for an end to direct provision in Ireland. In being paired with a writer in the direct provision system, my participation was predominantly in a mentoring capacity, that is to help bring writing by said writer (in my case, Donatien Francis) to print, but like everybody else I also contribute a short text of my own. Correspondences is edited by Stephen Rea and Jessica Traynor , and pairs writers, photographers and visual artists in the direct provision system in Ireland with Irish artists and writers. I was happy to be invited on board the project, not least given my own personal & family history as a child refugee of war and as a person who has migrated more than once. Comparing circumstances and severity is pointless or even counterproductive, but I can't fail to highlight the humbling effect of wh...