Christodoulos Makris

Having been dropped along with tens of thousands of others from a helicopter onto London's Jubilee Gardens about two months ago, one of the bookmarks with my poem 'The Impressionists' flew through my letterbox last week. It was great to get it - and to read its translation into Spanish done specifically for the Rain of Poems installation by Marcelo Pellegrini. Here's a rough image of it: And here's a video of me reading the original poem, made at the Poetry Library one rough morning during Poetry Parnassus:

Sabotage Reviews is a wonderful online magazine that publishes reviews of "those ephemeral works that are often created on a small budget and distributed to a limited amount of people". Apart from the obvious targets that are chapbooks, pamphlets and little magazines, its remit also includes other rarely-reviewed items such as poetry installations and performance poetry events. I'm delighted that Sabotage  recently published a positive review of Muses Walk . Written by Rishi Dastidar, it offers an intelligent reading of the book with an appreciation of its process and overall purpose.

Sabne Raznik, a poet, book reviewer and freelance writer based in Kentucky in the US, has posted a review of my three books on Yahoo! Voices under the heading 'The Work of Christodoulos Makris' . It's a generally positive response to them, particularly to  Muses Walk ("With it, one begins to see that Makris is an important poet, not just for sleepy Ireland, but perhaps for the world," she writes) but not without expressing some reservations along the way. I must note a couple of factual inaccuracies: the project for which Muses Walk was originally conceived and made is an international one, called 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street'; and,   much as I wish it were true, there has been no recent trip to Greece .

The festival village - an information hub, meeting place, refuelling stop and chillout space for all poets and everyone else who took part in Poetry Parnassus - was the venue for a modest welcoming party thrown on Monday evening 25 June for those of us who had arrived by then, prior to the festival proper beginning the next morning. There we had a chance to meet the team that put this mammoth undertaking together and made sure it didn't collapse under its own highly-ambitious weight. Massive kudos and thanks to all for their enterprise and energy - though I must especially mention Jana Stefanovska and festival organiser, Anna Selby. So, to my own contributions: Tuesday morning's 'Tradition vs Innovation' panel discussion for the World Poetry Summit was well attended, and immaculately chaired by Steven Fowler. Starting from my take on Gysin's quote, we discussed several interconnected issues including the collaborative possibilities of poetry, the effects of the...

Published by Bloodaxe, The World Record is an anthology featuring one poem by each of the poets who were selected to participate in Poetry Parnassus. Entries are arranged alphabetically by country; the  biographical notes following the main body of the book are also arranged by country, while  an index allows the reader to search by poet (sur)name. There's also an introductory note by Simon Armitage, and a preface by anthology co-editor and festival organiser Anna Selby. Apart from its obvious function as a reference publication, the book also serves as a valuable memento for those who have attended what has been a unique and vibrant gathering of poets. My contribution to The World Record is 'The Impressionists'. I t's taken from the-now-totally-sold-out  Round the Clock , and was first published in Succour 's issue 6 (The Future) . An interactive map through which you can 'visit' each country and read its representative's featured poem is availab...

As part of the Poetry Parnassus UK Tour , which sees some of the poets who participated in Poetry Parnassus take part in events at different locations around the UK, I'll be at the Derry-Londonderry Clipper Festival this coming Thursday and Friday (5-6 July). Yachts and crew competing in the Clipper 11-12 International Yacht Race started arriving in Derry-Londonderry on 29 June at the end of the transatlantic leg of the race, and the city welcomes them with a 10-day festival . Part of the festival programme is the 'Songs of the Sea' event, hosted by the Verbal Arts Centre, which features sessions with thirteen Poetry Parnassus poets (Imruh Bakari, Maureen Roberts, Andra Simons, Dhabiya Khamis, Selina Marsh, Saradha Soobrayen, Kate Kilalea, Gerður Kristny, Soleiman Adel Guemar, Zahir Al-Ghafri, Adbullahi Botan Hassan, Rocío Cerón and myself) who represent nations with close links to the sea. For this I'll be doing a 1-hour workshop on 5 July, right beside where the ...

You Loved it Here: Poetry Bench Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof, Southbank Centre, 26 June 2012, 10:00am - 1 July 2012, 22:00pm If you like sitting down, listening and feeling special, this will be a dream come true. Once a day a poet will sit and read a poem to whoever happens to be sat on the bench.

Rain of Poems Jubilee Gardens,  Tuesday 26 June 2012, 9:00pm (Rain of Poems is planned to take place on either Tuesday 26, Wednesday 27 or Thursday 28 June depending on weather conditions - please check the website and Southbank Centre/Casagrande social media at the time.) Watch 100,000 poems by over 300 contemporary poets from 204 countries fall from a helicopter over Jubilee Garden during Poetry Parnassus as the sun sets. The performance, carried out by the Chilean arts collective, Casagrande in collaboration with Southbank Centre, is set to be one of the most visually stunning displays of aeronautical poetry ever seen. Rain of Poems over London is the sixth performance of its kind which sees poetry raining down on cities that have suffered air raids in the past. It has been held in Berlin, Germany, Warsaw, Poland, Guernica, Spain, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Santiago, Chile. The bookmarks are released at twilight and printed in two languages, written by both Chilean ...

Maintenant Blue Room, Spirit Level, Southbank Centre, Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7:00pm This reading celebrates some of the most vivid and exciting poets currently writing in Europe, all of whom have featured in the Maintenant interview series: Sylva Fischerová, Pekko Kappi, Christodoulos Makris, Damir Šodan, Serhij Zhadan, Kārlis Vērdiņš and Endre Ruset. The Maintenant dictum has been to introduce poets who might lie outside of the Anglo-American scene, or be overlooked until they have reached the prominence of middle age, alongside great figures of the present day, who look eye to eye with their towering forebears. The reading is hosted in English by Steven Fowler.

The World Poetry Summit: Finding Poetry's Place in the World Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Tuesday 26 June 2012, 9.30am-6.30pm A global gathering of leading directors, publishers and writers to help locate poetry's place in the world and revolutionise how we work in the 21st Century. Programme includes: Thinking Outside the Book: Tradition Vs Innovation The Future of Poetry The Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, 10.30am – 11.30am This discussion explores Brion Gysin’s claim that ‘Writing is 50 years behind painting’ and asks how new collaborations, events, independent publishers and magazines are shaping poetry in the 21st century. Speakers include: Christodoulos Makris (Cyprus), Rocío Cerón (Mexico), Tishani Doshi (India) and Tom Chivers Chaired by Steven Fowler