Christodoulos Makris

The Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of Irish University Review (Vol 55 No. 2) published in January 2026 carries two distinct contributions from me: The first is an interview I gave to Lucy Collins, Associate Professor of Modern Poetry at University College Dublin and editor of Irish University Review , reflecting on my curatorial project 'Is this a poem?' at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). It bookends the exhibition nicely since a public conversation with Lucy was a core element of its launch on 23 February 2024. This interview revisits some of the themes of that initial, undocumented conversation. It is based on the transcript of a new post-project conversation we recorded at MoLI for the museum's digital channel, RadioMoLI , in June 2025. From the introduction: This conversation between Lucy Collins and Christodoulos Makris began as a podcast for Radio MoLI, discussing I s This a Poem? Adventures on the Edge of an Art Form , an ambitious and innovative exhibition, curate...

I was very happy to accept an exciting invitation by Cúirt International Festival of Literature director Manuela Moser to produce a brand new poem + poetry intervention in response to the festival's archives, to mark 40 years of Cúirt. My contribution, titled 'Diachronic Bonhomie', will be installed across the sites of the festival around Galway city over the duration of its 40th edition (8-13 April 2025) in a combination of print, visual and audio forms. And I will be speaking about the commission and related aspects of my practice in a festival event at The Mick Lally Theatre on Friday 11 April. Cúirt is a world class literature festival - one of Europe's oldest, and widely regarded as one of Ireland's finest. Among the writers programmed to participate this year are Sally Rooney, Paul Muldoon, Kayo Chingonyi, Roddy Doyle, Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Anne Enright, and Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian. Check out the full 2025 programme here . About 'Dia...

In the first half of September 2024 I will give two public readings: this week at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin along with Bebe Ashley ; and next week at the Embassy of Ireland in Riga, Latvia, with Madara Gruntmane . Details on both events below. And continue reading for details of a new, limited edition publication of mine coming this month with MoLI Editions, containing my short curator's essay on Is this a poem? and some beautiful images from the exhibition. A reminder that  Is this a poem?  closes on 22 September, so there's still a little time left to visit . * MoLI First Fridays: September 2024 Friday 6 September Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland 6pm - 9pm, Free Admission 6.30pm | Reading Christodoulos Makris Hear from the curator of Is this a poem? , whose live-generated mass collaboration poem ‘Chances Are’ is projected in the exhibition. 8pm | Reading Bebe Ashley A reading by Belfast-based poet, whose ‘...

As well as making work for books and other publication formats, my practice extends to performance and other modes of presentation, while my editorial and curatorial activities operate in tandem with my creative work feeding and influencing each other. Following on from the first part of this double post, which rounded up recent responses to my published work , below I log some press on my curated exhibition Is this a poem?  - whose run at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) I'm happy to report has been extended to 22 September 2024 - and of the premiere of 'Press Play,' a collaborative cross-disciplinary composition and performance relating to Ireland's housing crisis. * On 7 April 2024, the inaugural episode of the radio programme Poetry People on Ireland's state broadcaster RTÉ Radio One included a segment called 'What is Poetry?' For this segment, prompted by the advent of Is this a poem? , the show's producers commissioned a short essay from Museum ...

I'm very excited to announce my most ambitious curatorial project to date, which opens to the public today, Saturday 24 February 2024, at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin, and which will run until 21 July  (now extended to 22 September): Is this a Poem? is a mixed-media exhibition and event programme that collects works of poetry whose common characteristic is having been specifically conceived to operate beyond the page, sometimes in non-verbal modes. Accompanied by the tagline 'Adventures on the edge of an artform', Is this a poem? is an exhibition about poetry’s furthest frontiers. "Explore the entire museum to discover works of poetry that exist beyond the page: poems that are sound, sculpture, image, film, performances, software, and objects you can touch. The poems collected in this exhibition were mostly made in Ireland over the last decade, but are sometimes seen as a footnote to Irish poetry. Is this a poem? celebrates their playful capacity to...

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 ...

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...

My experimental poetry film 'Documentary Poetics reprise', commissioned by Máighréad Medbh for the Fingal Libraries Culture Night 2021 programme, premiered on 17 September. Part of the digital event 'Oblique Techniques: Poetry of Present-Absent Place', my film appeared alongside contributions by Alice Lyons and Catherine Walsh and with short introductions from Máighréad Medbh . The brief was to make a home video of no longer than twenty minutes presenting (an aspect of) our own practice, with the unifying concept of "a notion of the contemporary as coupled with shifts in perception and concepts of space". Responding to a short list of phrases compiled by Medbh and taken from our recent books, was an additional option or constraint. From the event description: Fingal Libraries present three poets whose work explores the contemporary world in unusual ways. Documenting the moment in its various forms - public, private, elemental, intellectual, abstract and materi...

I recently had the opportunity to programme a season of mixed media publications for Hotel magazine (London) expanding on selected performances from across our nine Phonica events (Dublin, January 2016 - November 2018). These publications appeared at regular intervals between April and August 2021, and the season is now complete. Phonica is a Dublin-based performance series rooted in Word and Sound, with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Directed, programmed and hosted by myself and Olesya Zdorovetska , Phonica aims to explore compositional and performative ideas and to encourage a melting pot of audiences and artists from across artforms and borders. It has been in receipt of financial and operational support from the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council, Poetry Ireland and Smock Alley Theatre, as well as a range of international partners. The full Phonica history is documented here . After nine iterations, activities were interrupted due to a number of facto...

Chromatics : An Evening of Hybrid Poetries and Cultures @ Club Chroma, Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA invites "one of Ireland’s leading explorers of experimental poetics" Christodoulos Makris to co-curate an evening of playful experimentation, sampling poetry, readings, performance and artists’ moving image as they collide with fragments of club culture, in which to delight you in the sensual, visual and conceptual possibilities of word, sound and image. Guests include Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Kit Fryatt, James King, Vicky Langan, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Padraig Regan . Tues 24 March 2020 / 19:00 - 21:00 Project Spaces ***POSTPONED*** Christodoulos Makris co-curates an evening of playful experimentation – sampling poetry, readings, performance and artists’ moving image as they collide with fragments of club culture. Guests include Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Kit Fryatt, James King, Vicky Langan, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Padraig Regan and others whose work is invested in posing interesting ...

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...

Earlier this year I contributed an excerpt from my new long poem 'Capital' (the full poem will be published in the forthcoming Dublin edition in the Dostoyevsky Wannabe Cities series of anthologies ) to the Field Guide to Experimental Irish Literature , a project and exhibition by New York artist Dannielle Tegeder in the Irish Arts Center in New York City. For this project, subtitled 'Drawing Room' and active 11 January - 7 April 2019, "Dannielle Tegeder reached out to select contemporary Irish poets, asking them to contribute a work of theirs, in some way evoking or thematically related to Ireland. Using sheets of archival paper printed with these pieces, Tegeder has begun - and will continue - responding to their words through abstract drawing and collage. The exhibition will have several different iterations, changing and evolving as new collaborations between artist and poet emerge. "Tegeder found inspiration for this abstracted anthology of experime...