Christodoulos Makris

On Thursday 24 September I will perform Chapter 9 from my ongoing durational project DIAL as part of the programme for the 14th edition of Sardam International Interdisciplinary Literature Festival in Limassol, Cyprus. Scheduled as the opening performance event of this year's festival, DIAL (Chapter 9: September) will also feature sonic interventions from two of my regular collaborators: Joanna Mattrey on viola, and Keith Lindsay on electronics. Our start time is 8pm, and the performance duration will be 60 minutes exactly. The venue is Palio Xydadiko (Old Vinegar Factory)  at Genethliou Mitella 34, Lemesos. Admission is free, but booking is required. Please see the festival website for reservation details. For more about DIAL see here . Our participation in Sardam 2026 is made possible through generous funding support from Culture Ireland - Ireland’s national agency for the promotion of the arts and culture. Sardam (meaning "verbal slip" in Greek) is an annual, o...

Big thanks to everyone who made  the pilot edition of re:verb   such a joyous and remarkable experience: participating poets and artists, design and technical support, venue, bookshop, audience(s). It was a genuine pleasure to organise, programme, direct and host. Wonderful also to see a full or near-full house at all five sessions. An article on Asymptote journal - a leading online platform for international literature and translation - called re:verb "a daring and much needed enterprise" and "a one-of-a-kind literary festival in Ireland (and possibly the world)." I put together a short documentary of re:verb 2026 which I hope captures something of its spirit and vibe. Though you really had to be there. You can view it on YouTube  (with accompanying information and credits) or below.

I was pleased to be able to formalise an almost decade-long association with New Jersey / New York writer, poet and multimedia artist  Chris Campanioni  through a commissioned conversation for  Books Ireland magazine. The resulting 6,500 word piece exploring the in-conversation format as collaborative enterprise and literary genre has the title  'Work That Happens Elsewhere,'  and it was published on 5 December 2025. From the introduction: After almost a decade of correspondence, exchange of work and editorial activities, Chris Campanioni (New Jersey) and Christodoulos Makris (Dublin) met in person in New York City in January 2025, cementing a mutual understanding of their work, in particular how it shares strong kinship and an interest in fiercely contemporary culture and poetics. In this transatlantic in-conversation piece, composed remotely between 26 September and 05 November 2025, the poets reflect on each other’s work and their shared intermedial, cross-d...

Two sections from my fifth book It Reeks of Radio , along with their translations into Greek by Despina Pirketti, are featured in the latest issue of the illustrious UK-based magazine Modern Poetry in Translation . The issue, released late November 2025, bears the title 'The Antidote to Agony: Focus on the Poetry of Greece and Cyprus.' Modern Poetry in Translation  was founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, and for 60 years it has been publishing "the best new poetry, essays and reviews from around the world." In truth I was somewhat surprised to be invited by guest issue editor, Jessica Sequeira , to feature, as the focus is on translations into English of poetry written in Greek. However, in the issue announcement  Jessica writes the following: "Greek poetry, as perhaps all poetry, opens the heart to the beyond, to the liminal condition. The truth is that the idea of a national focus will forever be complicated given that migrants also form part of...

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 grateful for attention my work continues to receive from other poets and writers, reviewers and editors, essayists and academics. I'm especially pleased when this is not confined to discussions of the most recent book, but extends to the broader arc of my practice, giving a multifaceted and cumulative reading of it. This is Part One of a two-part post rounding up some commentary that appeared over the first half of 2024. It focuses on reviews and essays on my books or other published work. Part Two ( coming soon now available here ) will log coverage of activities of mine that extend beyond print publishing. * On 11 January 2024, UK-based  Stride Magazine published a review of  Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document (Veer Books, 2023) which I was happy to note given the attention Stride gives to poetry from small presses and in broadly experimental modes, and especially since in the past the magazine published one of the most comprehensive reviews of my third boo...

The Arts Council of Ireland recently published a profile on my work as a poet operating in a post-digital landscape, specifically in relation to  sorry that you were not moved , my digital project in collaboration with Kimberly Campanello that was released by Fallow Media in February 2022. This study of my work and our project is one of five such profile pieces commissioned by The Arts Council. It was produced in the context of its new drive to support the Digital Arts in Ireland and in connection with the recent launch of its Digital Arts Policy. Titled 'Reimagining literature in a digital space' , the study was authored by Denise McDonagh of Culture Works , with an accompanying video element created by Kate Costello of Narrator & Co . It was composed following a transcribed informal conversation and interview with me - as director and lead artist on  sorry that you were not moved  - about the aims, development and impact of the project, as well ...

I'm grateful for the attention that my fourth book Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document , published earlier this year, continues to receive, manifested through print and online reviews as well as new invitations to present the work in various settings. This is a roundup of some reviews that have appeared between its first by Jessica Traynor in The Irish Times  on 24 June, and the end of October 2023. On 3 July 2023, Enzo Minarelli, an Italian poet active in international avant-garde circles since the 1970s and preoccupied with performance and the audiovisual dimensions of poetry, published a review of the book in his personal blog , in Italian. With the help of Minarelli's own translation into English and that of Italian-speaking friends, I was able to deduce that this is an overwhelmingly positive review engaging deeply with the material, its processes and antecedents. "... here the poet undoubtedly has in mind the scene, the sequence or the action or the thought to b...

Last Saturday's edition of The Irish Times (24 June 2023) carries Jessica Traynor's review of my recent book Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document . The review begins with Traynor stating that "the fourth full-length collection by [...] one of Ireland's foremost avant-garde poets, submerges the reader in the arch - and sometimes frighteningly sentient - language of the internet." Its subject, she continues, is "the self as seen through many online filters" with the poems within it "concerned with the commodification of language, and how it can serve as a cunning apparatus to conceal our baser intentions." While excerpting from the poems 'cubist debrief', 'everybody knows but you', and 'Paul Scholes' foot' to elaborate on her reading of the work, Traynor remains attuned to the whole book as the prevailing unit of composition. "These are tightly sprung poems capable of startling juxtapositions," she writes...

A review of this is no longer entertainment  appeared on PANK Magazine  last week, written by Hayden Bergman - poet, translator and Books Editor at  The Literary Review. Founded in 2006 by M. Bartley Seigel and Roxane Gay, PANK Magazine is a US literary magazine "fostering access to innovative poetry and prose, publishing the brightest and most promising writers for the most adventurous readers". It is currently edited by Jessica Fischoff and Chris Campanioni with a remit to "advance the original vision of the founding editors and the rich history that’s published so many innovative voices". In his review Bergman names some of the subject areas the book covers and writes that "it does so in an acrobatic manner, darting between poetic registers, code-switching from satire to sentiment". He considers it being marked by collisions of ideological extremes, and comments: "Makris writes in a way that takes note of the pleasures and pitfalls of extrem...

A review of this is no longer entertainment appeared on Stride magazine on 29 May 2020. Stride was founded in 1982 and is edited by Rupert Loydell. It has had various incarnations over the years, most recently in an online edition, with an archive of its content between 1999 and 2015 available at http://stridemagazine.co.uk . As of May 2016 it is being published at http://stridemagazine.blogspot.co.uk/ . The review is by writer, performer and teacher Mark Leahy , and it is titled 'move away from blatant plagiarism' - which is itself a quote from my book. Leahy places the book in the traditions of avant-garde writing and documentary poetics (in both film and poetry) and uses numerous examples from it to illuminate context, process and intention. To this end he also references  my 2017 StAnza Festival project  Browsing History and the recent audio recording of extracts from this is no longer entertainment for Hotel magazine . Crucially, he also picks up on the physicality...

Issue 130 of Poetry Ireland Review (April 2020) carries a review of  this is no longer entertainment . Written by David Toms, the review piece is titled 'Feeding The Engines' and in it my book is considered along with books by Matt Kirkham and Natasha Cuddington. Toms opens with a paragraph on Shoshana Zuboff's groundbreaking work  The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and in particular on her use of the term 'behaviour surplus', identified as 21st century capitalism's driving force and the internet's central product - which serves as an introduction to his discussion of my book. Writing about this is no longer entertainment  he argues that "the title itself is a stark warning, as strong as Zuboff's core argument" and calls the book "a sustained and at times terrifying glimpse of the world as it now exists". Later he writes: "We talk about the online and offline, although the line between one and the other - as Zuboff's work d...

While in Amsterdam at the beginning of the month I was asked by Hotel magazine co-editor Dominic Jaeckle to read some extracts from this is no longer entertainment for audio publication on the Hotel online archive. Jaeckle has heard me read publicly from the book on a number of occasions, and his conception of a fundamental difference between the reading and hearing experiences, with regard to the material in this book in particular, prompted his invitation. In a perceptive note accompanying the publication of the recording , he writes: "The rolling composite voice on show in Makris’ this is no longer entertainment realizes a more complex relationship with polyphony than the page alone can allow. The experience of reading these texts can’t help but engineer a little bad detective work on the part of the reader; we’re accustomed to wading through a myriad of multi-authored opinions as we stroll a heavy thumb through the roll-call of comments that accompany any video, art...

A review of this is no longer entertainment appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday 26 December 2019. The review is by Gregory Betts, professor of English language & literature at Brock University, Ontario, Canada - who has recently served as Craig Dobbin Professor for Canadian Studies at University College Dublin. My book is reviewed in juxtaposition with Kimberly Campanello's MOTHERBABYHOME as a means of exploring how "as the world transforms, so too must its poetry, disregarding tradition." The two books are presented as examples of writing that "gives up the nationalist illusion of commonality to expose the fault lines of a society," which is "particularly necessary in an age of complex social turbulence on the precipice of even further changes." Commenting specifically on  this is no longer entertainment , Betts states that "[it] uses a conceptual writing approach to illuminate fissures in our social fabric," and that the col...

Two new poems of mine from an emerging cycle are featured in the latest issue of Irish University Review (Spring / Summer 2019) - a special issue focusing on Food, Energy, Climate, Irish Culture and World-Ecology. The Irish University Review was founded in 1970 at University College Dublin as a journal of Irish literary criticism. Since then it has become the leading global journal of Irish literary studies. It is affiliated to the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures  and it is published by Edinburgh University Press. The current editor of Irish University Review is Emilie Pine - though the issue in question is guest-edited by Lucy Collins and Sharae Deckard. In addition to  my two poems 'doctrine' and 'the risk' , Lucy Collins in her article  'If that's not a shock to the system I don't know what'  offers an introduction to my work and a discerning reading of the two published poems, describing them as "poems of co...

Organised by Gregory Betts - poet, scholar, editor, and 2018-19 Craig Dobbin professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin (UCD) - and taking place at UCD and associated spaces over three days 25-27 April 2019, TEXT / SOUND / PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space is a highly ambitious conference and gathering of scholars, students, writers, and community partners. There's a keynote address and masterclass workshop on each of the three pillars of the conference, alongside academic and creative panels, roundtables, and performances. A masterclass on digitization and archival practices is also being offered, in collaboration with the Irish Poetry Reading Archive (UCD) and the SpokenWeb Project (Concordia). Other forms of nontraditional engagement, including performances, thematic unconference-style discussions, and exhibitions, will supplement the panels, classes, and plenary talks. The conference will feature papers and presentations that expand, trouble, decentraliz...

I'm happy to note that reviews of my second book The Architecture of Chance keep appearing, more than two years after publication. The most recent, written by Stephanie Koetsier for Dundee University Review of the Arts (DURA) , was part of a series of reviews of books by poets who participated in the 2017 edition of StAnza , Scotland's International Poetry Festival in St Andrews, at the beginning of March. In the review , published just days before the festival, Koetsier calls the collection "unique" and finds that the work in it "challenges the preconceived structures" of poetry. It is "the epitome of the contemporary poet’s working breadth and depth," she writes. My thanks to Stephanie Koetsier and DURA for their interest. * While in St Andrews I spoke to journalist Rebecca Monks for an article about my Digital Residency at StAnza 2017  that she was preparing for Scotland's arts and entertainment magazine thelist.co.uk, and which app...

Issue 5 of Poetry Ireland's literary pamphlet Trumpet  (Spring 2016) carries Michael S. Begnal's review of The Architecture of Chance  - in a piece also discussing Trevor Joyce's Rome's Wreck and Peter O'Neill's The Dark Pool . Begnal describes the book's devices as "similar perhaps to Dada, Oulipo or the more recent Flarf poets" and remarks that despite such practices often being looked upon as "rarefied or merely academic exercises" the work is in fact "deeply engaged with the world, at times outright political". He uses examples as varied in approach as 'XXXXX', 'From Something to Nothing', 'Prime Time' and 'Two Nudes' to discuss the book's concerns (its "wry socioeconomic critique" among others) and concludes with the view that The Architecture of Chance "manages to be continually engaging, often surprising, and frequently funny". My thanks to Michael Begnal for ...

I'm happy to note that more than a year now since publication of The Architecture of Chance  the reviews keep coming. This latest one is from Sabne Raznik, a writer, editor and book reviewer based in Kentucky in the US. In what is a generous reading , Raznik calls the book "an exciting collection" where "the rewards are substantial". She focuses on some of the more conceptual and process-based material, particularly on 'Heaney after Rauschenberg' of which she writes: "while soothingly familiar in vocabulary, it decenters Heaney's careful poetics almost completely ... it serves as an eerie, aching tribute of sorts - even as it seeks to shatter the comfortable traditionalism of Heaney's legacy". My thanks to Sabne Raznik for the attention to the book, and for her continued interest in my work: along with this review she republished  a review on my previous books  from an old blog.

Billy Mills is a poet, editor and publisher currently based in Limerick. A contributor to The Guardian , he also frequently reviews books on various publications as well as on his blog Elliptical Movements - where in a post titled 'Poets Abroad' he recently considered  The Architecture of Chance alongside books by Robert Peake and Lucy Furlong. Mills notes the shift in compositional emphasis between  Spitting Out the Mother Tongue ("on the basis of his previous book ... he is [also] one of the most interesting of the younger Irish poets of the moment") and  The Architecture of Chance , but is ambivalent about the more conceptual or process-based elements in the book, while conceding that "it is gratifying to see younger poets in Ireland who are willing to take the risk of experimentation in this area". Concluding, with the resulting texts as the focus of his consideration, that some of the "procedural" poems work better than others, he moves ...