Christodoulos Makris

On Wednesday 26 January I will be reading as guest poet at the Poetry in Motion monthly series of readings at the Droichead Arts Centre. These sessions start at 7.30pm with short readings from members of the the Saltwater Scribblers writing group (who have now taken over the running of the series). I'm told that guest writer readings can lead to dicussions about the writing craft. Admission is free. Sean-Nos Singing sessions follow the readings - these start at around 9.30pm and are also free of charge. My thanks to the previous organiser of the Poetry in Motion series, Emer Davis, for arranging this reading.

For the 43rd edition of 3:AM Magazine's Maintenant series of features on contemporary European poets, I am being interviewd by the series editor, Steven Fowler . As is the usual practice, the interview is accompanied by a number of my poems . Each featured poet is assigned to a country, and as such I was the first to have fallen into the category marked 'Cyprus'. I comment on distinctions on the basis of nationality in the interview . I was delighted to have been approached for this feature. I think the series is a terrific and necessary initiative from 3:AM Magazine, through which I've become aware of the work of some really exciting poets.

On Monday 15 November I went along to the Spoken Word gig in Paris. Held at a great little colourful venue, a corner bar with intimately packed tables and a small performance stage, it seems to attract a primarily non-Francophone and mostly, but not exclusively, English-speaking crowd. And refusing to be limited by its title, this essentially open-mic weekly series encourages performances of all kinds. So there was music - both acoustic and electronic, live and recorded - dramatic readings, storytelling, motley performances and general standup mayhem, as well as poetry. In English, French and more. A bit of trouble was brewing outside; at one stage somebody was rushed to hospital (a victim, I later heard, of nothing more than too much drinking); somebody else was merrily talking on her phone during performances (this open-mic event involved no microphone); and during the break I was propositioned with something that included booze, cash, a sketchpad and other things which remained sui...

Succour 's managing editor Anthony Banks writes: Succour ran for five years and ten issues from 2004 to 2009. During this period it was the UK’s most exciting journal of new fiction, poetry and art – “a Granta for the Facebook generation” according to Time Out. Succour 's editors in London, Manchester, Brighton, Exeter and Dublin were committed to seeking out and publishing the very best new writing and artwork. Succour ’s contributors could be roughly divided into three categories. The first was writers who had never had any work published before, who we discovered either through open submissions, at public readings, or on the recommendation of other writers. Then there were writers who had published one or two collections or novels, but who were still in a sense emerging writers and whose work we wanted to bring to a wider audience. We also published new work by more established writers, or writers with a cult following, who we invited to contribute to the journa...

Nick Pearson 's exhibition Neither Use nor Ornament opens at the Dean Clough Galleries in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on Saturday 9 October. "Minimal intervention"? "Refabrication"? Leeds-born, London-based artist Nick Pearson is a creative 'fence', filching objects from the real world and subtly re-designating them before palming them off on the viewer. Snatching conversational fragments and kidnapping the lives of redundant objects he re-presents them - like objects in a dodgy charity shop - as items that promise both utility and decoration but deliver neither. The art world calls it 'slippage'. It's always playful and it's sometimes profound (but only when you least expect it). An exhibition catalogue with the same title will also be available. An update of the original 2004 edition, the catalogue includes reproductions and critical essays - as well as my contribution 'Why I Live in Egypt'. For this I lifted an extract from an a...

An audio recording of my reading in Cork (20 September) has been posted on the Ó Bhéal website.

Writing 3.0 is a festival co-programmed by Fingal County Libraries and the Fingal Arts Office, and runs from 1 October to 26 October 2010. On offer are readings and author talks, film screenings, workshops (performance poetry, creative writing, screenwriting, animation) and many more. As part of the programme I will be hosting an open-mic poetry session , preceded by readings from guest poets Colm Keegan and Dave Lordan. This will take place on Wednesday 6 October at 7pm. The venue is Swords Castle. All events are free - though all those completing the online booking form will be entered into a lottery for tickets. *Update, 30/09/10 * The venue for the open-mic session has been changed. It will now take place in the Council Chamber in County Hall (Swords) - which charges the event with a new dimension.

On Monday 20 September I will be reading at Cork city's weekly poetry event, Ó Bhéal . Ó Bhéal has been running since April 2007 and typically presents a guest poet followed by an open-mic session, while the evening kicks off with a 'poetry challenge'. Ó Bhéal has also been promoting the art of the poetry-film. I was delighted to read on its website that the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin will be screening The Lammas Hireling , a film of Ian Duhig's poem of the same name made by Ó Bhéal founder and director Paul Casey, as part of its programme in October. My thanks to all at Ó Bhéal for having me as a guest poet. The venue is The Long Valley Bar (upstairs) on Winthrop Street, and start time is 9pm. Entrance is free.

The question of 'sincerity' or 'authenticity' in writing, and whether it exists or is even desirable, is something that has been concerning me more and more. I am being forced to mull over it again after reading Michael Kindellan's essay "'The Labor of Revision': George Oppen's Sincerity" published in the current issue of The Wolf . Kindellan writes: "It is the nature of Oppen's 'test' to reject as insincere anything which is already known at the time of writing; which is to say anything unlearned during the process of writing itself is corrupt." I am also halfway through Melissa Lee-Houghton's book Patterns of Mourning (Chipmunka Publishing, 2009). A book-length 'poetic diary' comprised of a series of 'songs' or epistles to various persons, it is a difficult read in terms of the circumstances of its composition and subject matter ("I wrote this book while undergoing what was later termed a Mixed ...