Christodoulos Makris

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...

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 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...

In the first half of January 2025 I will be in residence at Irish Arts Center in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York City. This residency represents the second half of my participation in the inaugural  Listowel - New York International Residency Programme , and my aim while at the centre is to develop further a new poetry manuscript. My stay in New York  is also giving me the opportunity to reconnect with the other artists from Ireland and the US selected to participate in this programme, to attend some theatre, music and poetry gigs and shows, and to make new connections with writers, artists and organisations operating in the city. And with the formal programme not providing a showcase opportunity, I'm grateful that friends and collaborators of mine currently and previously based in New York have generously arranged the following two exciting events on the occasion of my visit, at which I will be performing with some brilliant local poets and musicians: - On Wednes...

I'm excited to be taking part in the Listowel - New York International Residency programme 2024-25, a unique two-part residency aiming to connect artists from the experimental theatre, dance, and performance scenes in Ireland and New York City. Led by St John's Theatre & Arts Centre in Listowel, Co Kerry, and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, Kerry County Arts Office, and the Irish Arts Center in New York City, this initiative supports 7 selected artists - four from Ireland and three from New York - to spend two weeks (20 May - 2 June 2024) in Listowel, a small town in north Co Kerry known for its literary heritage, and one week in January 2025 at the Irish Arts Centre in New York. I'm participating in this cool generative opportunity alongside six other artists operating in experimental performance modes and active in a range of artforms and locations: Anthony Keigher, Emily Davis, Gabriel Graves, Amanda Horowitz, Jane Deasy, and Hayley Stahl. According to th...

I'm partnering once again with Kildare County Council Arts and Libraries Service, Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare, and the European Poetry Festival through its director SJ Fowler, to co-programme my third European Poetry Festival event in Ireland, following editions in 2019 and 2022 . Thursday 2 May 2024, Riverbank Arts Centre. 7.30pm start. Click here to book your free ticket . Full details through the link, and below. A special event offering a unique approach to poetry in performance: 5 poets/artists based in Ireland and 4 visiting poets/artists from the rest of Europe pair up to produce brand new, specially commissioned collaborative works to premiere on the night. Representing a legacy of poet Christodoulos Makris’ spell as Writer in Residence at Maynooth University and Kildare County Council Arts & Library Service, this is his third programming partnership with European Poetry Festival to be presented at Riverbank Arts Centre . The European Poetry Festival...

I'm excited to announce that my fifth full-length book of poetry It Reeks of Radio , a hybrid poem incorporating documentary text and visuals composed through my commissioned engagement with RTÉ Radio archives held at University College Dublin (UCD), will be published on 26 September 2023. Especially exciting is the fact that It Reeks of Radio is the inaugural title from BLR Editions, a new imprint connected to the annual journal Belfield Literary Review  - a joint UCD / Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) publication venture. And I'm very pleased that the book will be launched during WORDFFEVER , a UCD one day creative writing conference taking place at MoLI on 26 September, as part of which I will be in conversation about the book with this year's UCD / Arts Council of Ireland Writer in Residence, Victoria Kennefick . Further details below: About the Book: It Reeks of Radio is a book-length poem composed entirely from fragments of communication around historical (pre-19...

A new piece of mine in collaboration with visual artist Niamh McCann and theatre-maker Richard Walsh appears in  Exit. Music. Lights.,  a publication from the Numbered Editions imprint with commissioned contributions from artists across forms. Designed by Clare Bell  and released in late 2022,  Exit. Music. Lights.  features contributions from a group of visual artists, writers and theatre-makers exploring theatre, performance and the idea of the ‘black out’ in a variety of ways. It's the second in a series of Numbered Editions, a Dublin-based experimental imprint  co-edited by Nathan O’Donnell and Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll . Numbered Editions is described as "an occasional platform for writing by artists across artforms," and it is interested in points of intersection. Operating on the principle of serialisation, it publishes neither books nor magazines but something in between. (I was pleased also to be part of the first title in the series, figure | gr...

Issue 11 of Poetry Ireland's occasional literary pamphlet Trumpet  - a minor-key publishing project continuing to grow in significance, offering essays and reviews as well as original poetry - was released last month. The focus of this issue, edited by Tapasya Narang , is on ephemeral poetic forms as a means of querying the value of 'publishing' and the assumption that poetry is organised around the achievement of posterity. Trumpet 11 closes with a full page reproduction of my poem 'Browsing History #4', made as part of  my project as Digital Poet in Residence at StAnza International Poetry Festival (2017)  in St Andrews, Scotland. The full outcome of the Browsing History project is  available as a set of postcards from zimZalla avant objects . On publication of the postcards in March 2018,  I wrote a short essay for the StAnza Festival website  reflecting on the project's concept and compositional & publication processes, and its relationship to eph...

A pleasure to be extending my partnership with Kildare Readers Festival and Riverbank Arts Centre : for the 2022 edition of the festival I am programming and hosting another event in my 'Ways of Writing' curatorial strand . In light of my interest and practice in documentary poetics, which has taken the form of several projects and the release of books , objects , digital publications , short films etc - and with an upcoming book with title  It Reeks of Radio , the result of my commissioned engagement with archival material at University College Dublin , set to be published by the University within the coming year - I have invited Bebe Ashley , Julie Morrissy , and Cherry Smyth , three poets who have also worked with archives or contemporary documentary material, to speak about aspects of their own practice. Thursday 6 October 2022, Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare . 6pm start. Book your free tickets here . Full event details below: Three contemporary poets whose...

I'm very pleased to be curating the closing event of the European Poetry Festival 2022 in partnership with festival director SJ Fowler. 'The European Camarade: Ireland' takes place at Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, on Saturday 9 July 2022. My involvement with the festival - in a co-producing and programming role - began with the closing event of the 2019 edition , which I was able to produce in the context of my spell as Writer in Residence at Maynooth University & Kildare County Council Library and Arts Service (2018-19). Plans for follow-up events were undermined by the pandemic, but we are now in a position to resume this multi-body partnership with an event offering a unique approach to multi-genre, cross-border and collaborative poetics, and representing a significant legacy of my writing residency in Co Kildare. The European Poetry Festival is a predominantly UK-based festival celebrating the resurgence of avant-garde and literary poetry across E...