Subcritical Tests, by Ailbhe Darcy & SJ Fowler (gorse editions)

It was a total pleasure and a privilege to work with Ailbhe & Steven as editor of this extraordinary book. My interventions were minimal, in truth, since the concept and execution of the work, despite or because of the presence of two individually strong poetic sensibilities, was of the highest order. Having witnessed this collaboration at its genesis while we toured together in September 2014 I was hardly surprised by this, and I'm very proud to be associated with this work.


Subcritical Tests, a book of poetry by Ailbhe Darcy & SJ Fowler, with cover design and interior illustrations by Niall McCormack, is now out. Subcritical Tests is the first title published by gorse editions.

"The nearness of nuclear holocaust, always just one clumsy accident away, forms an entry point into this record of a friendship. The poems in Subcritical Tests stubbornly make connections, ever conscious of the impending threat of annihilation. Oblique, modern, lyrical, humorous, these poems represent the range of Ailbhe Darcy and SJ Fowler‘s individual practices, modulated and melded through the collaborative process."



We will hold two launch events for Subcritical Tests. Please join us at either (or both!) if you can:

• On Monday 10 July we'll be at Sun & 13 Cantons, 21 Great Putney Street, Soho, London, for an evening with gorse featuring readings from Niven Govinden, Susana Medina and Colm O'Shea, followed by the presentation of Subcritical Tests.
• On Wednesday 12 July we'll be at Poetry Ireland, 11 Parnell Square East, for the book's Dublin launch.

About gorse editions:
gorse editions was set up in 2017. We are a boutique imprint devoted to finding and publishing the best innovative writing, from home and elsewhere. gorse editions is closely connected to our journal, and will act as a natural extension of themes and issues encompassing ideas and conversations already begun in our pages.

Phonica: Six

Phonica: Six

Monday 17 July 2017
7.30pm 
Boys School, Smock Alley Theatre
Admission: €7.00 / €5.00

with
Lina Andonovska
Jessica Foley
IRIDE PROJECT
Claire Potter
Billy Ramsell
Nazgul Shukaeva



 


Phonica: Six will feature performances from a host of trailblazing and award-winning Irish and international writers, musicians and artists working in the realms of new and electroacoustic music, contemporary poetry, installation and audio-visual composition, improvisational writing, telecommunications research, ethno-jazz, and more.

Phonica is a primarily poetry and music series with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, programmed and hosted since early 2016 by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, Phonica aims to explore compositional and performative ideas and to encourage a melting pot of audiences and artists from across artforms.

Featured Artists:

Quickly gaining recognition internationally as a fearless and versatile artist, flautist Lina Andonovska has collaborated and performed with Crash Ensemble (Ireland), Australian Chamber Orchestra, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), s t a r g a z e, Southern Cross Soloists (Aus) and eighth blackbird (USA). Critically acclaimed for her interpretation of new music, Rolling Stone Magazine hailed her performance at Bang on a Can Summer Festival as “superbly played”. As an orchestral player, Lina has performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was co-principal flute of the Southbank Sinfonia (UK) and has appeared with Australia’s major symphony orchestras. At the age of 21, Lina held a fellowship with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra where she recorded and performed all of Prokofiev’s orchestral works as guest Principal Piccolo under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy. As soloist she has performed concerti with the Southbank Sinfonia, Orchestra Victoria and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. She was awarded the prestigious Freedman Fellowship in 2013 and recently completed an Asialink residency where she used her skills as a classical musician to help initiate Timor-Leste’s first locally run classical music school. She has been three times artist-in- residence at the Banff Centre and Crash Ensemble’s musician-in- residence in 2015. Recent performance credits include the Tokyo Experimental Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Sacrum Profanum, Dublin Theatre Festival, BBC Proms, Metropolis New Music Festival, City of London Festival and GAIDA New Music Festival. Upcoming performances include the premiere of Donnacha Dennehy’s new opera The Second Violinist to be premiered at the Galway International Arts Festival.

Jessica Foley works as a writer, dramaturge and audio-visual artist. Her work is often generated collaboratively and performed through improvisation, choreography and audio-visual compositions and staging. Since 2010 she has worked in the academic context of telecommunications research at Trinity College Dublin. She is writer-in-residence with CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland centre for future networks and communications, where she co-devises approaches to research storytelling through improvisational writing, conversation and audio-casting. Jessica is currently working on an experimental non-fiction collection based upon field-notes generated during her Ph.D. research with the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR).

The IRIDE PROJECT investigate nondeterministic electroacoustic music and soundemphasis poetry making use of conventional and unconventional instruments, piezoelectric transducers, field recordings, electronics, spoken word, and a Doepfer A100 modular analogue synthesizer. Massimo Daví is a pianist, composer, sound artist and holds a Master's Degree in Music. Monica Miuccio is a Poet and Performer. Her literary works were awarded and featured in prestigious publications. Their works were performed in Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Germany, Mexico, Macedonia, UK, Czech Republic and Spain and featured on RTÉ Lyric FM program Nova curated by Bernard Clarke. The Duo participated at international festivals and convocations such as Irish Sound, Science and Technology Convocations and “Prague Quadrennial Of Sound Design and Space” in Czech Republic.

Claire Potter, an artist writer from Merseyside, works with live, published and recorded text, installation and performance. Claire’s work addresses modes of speaking and reading to bring considerations of narratology, affect and methods of articulation to the attention of audiences. Claire organises Shady Dealings With Language, an interdisciplinary event series for art and performance writing in the UK. Recent works include CHAVSCUMBOSS, performance, Colour Out Of Space, UK, 2016; Touching, performance, Lydgalleriet, NOR, 2016; Lads of Aran, visual essay in Bodies that Remain (Punctum, 2017); Lads Rites, visual essay in Sites of Research (OAR Platform, 2017).

Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC. He has published two collections with Dedalus Press, Complicated Pleasures in 2007 and The Architect’s Dream of Winter in 2013, which was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. He was awarded the Chair of Ireland Bursary for 2013 and the Poetry Ireland Residency Bursary for 2015. He has been invited to read his work at many festivals and literary events around the world. He lives in Cork where he co-runs an educational publishing company.

Nazgul Shukaeva was born in Kazakhstan, and is a vocalist and performer of contemporary classical, jazz and improvised music, combining the ancient technique of throat singing "kai" with modern elements, creating something previously inaudible and invisible. She studied piano and choral conducting in Alma-Ata music college and received a degree in vocal studies at Gnessin Music Academy in Moscow in the class of Professor Afanasiev. From 1985 to 1991 Nazgul participated in vocal competitions throughout the former USSR winning various awards. She has been studying the properties and characteristics of sound and voice for over 30 years and for the past 10 years the various quantum processes of sound healing. Since 2006 she has been based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her own projects include ethno-jazz ensemble "Asia Tengri" focused on the new interpretation of traditional Kazakh music and “Lord’s Prayer” reimagining gospel sounds in the context of modern world. As a soloist of Kiev Chamber Orchestra she performed music by leading Ukrainian contemporary composers among which Svyatoslav Luniev and Victoria Poleva, giving the world premiere of mono-opera "Alice in Wonderland" in 2013. Other collaborative projects are Elena Leonova’s “That Crazed Girl” based on W.B.Yeats poetry, Andrew Arnautov’s «Triangular matrix» and Olesia Zdorovetska’s “ERA”.


BOOK TICKETS NOW

Phonica acknowledges generous funding support from The Arts Council of Ireland under its Festivals and Events Scheme.

January - April 2017: a recap

The year has started pretty full on, and this is far from a complaint. Taking advantage of a couple of hours of lull, I've put together this recap with some thoughts on a selection of my recent activities on various fronts (news on publications will follow on separate posts):

I'm proud and excited to be working with Ailbhe Darcy and SJ Fowler to bring their collaborative book of poetry Subcritical Tests, the first title in our emerging gorse editions, to print. Quite apt since the book has its roots in the collaborative poetry tour Yes But Are We Enemies from 2014 - the extension of Steven's Enemies Project into Ireland which I produced and co-curated, and for which Ailbhe was one of the core poets. Cover and internal artwork is by the ever-brilliant Niall McCormack; there's also a short trailer film made by Conor Friel inspired by the material in the book. Preorders and launch details soon.

Issue 10 of gorse will be a special collectors', commission-only issue which I’m editing in full, with the interlinked and ongoing commissioning, editorial & curatorial process underway. All contributions to gorse no. 10, which will be published in a form that slightly deviates from that of the 'regular' issues, respond to a specific subject... More to be revealed over the coming months (the issue is due out in September) but I wanted to note how excited I am to be working with some amazing writers and artists from across Europe and the Americas towards it. gorse no. 9 will precede that, of course, to be published in July, and I’m currently in the process of editing the poetry section out of open submissions and invited contributions.

Phonica: Five took place on Monday 24 April, "a triumph" according to an email I received a couple of days later. From the vantage point of co-curating and hosting the event, all performances in their full range and impact were greatly enjoyable. Making use of the facilities afforded to us by our new partner venue, the stunning Boys School space at Smock Alley Theatre, enables us to showcase the work of our guests in more complexity that we could before. The professionalism of the technical staff at the venue in responding to our guests' vision ensured that the cross-pollinating, multidisciplinary aspect which is at the core of Phonica came through. I'm convinced the material on offer both delighted and challenged our audience, even if, inevitably, to varying degrees for different people. And that's a strength of Phonica, I believe. Thanks to my co-programmer Olesya Zdorovetska for wonderfully orchestrating the technical requirements and for documenting the event. Thanks also to Bernard Clarke at Nova on Lyric FM and Therese Kelly from RTÉ Arena for requesting and broadcasting work from some of our guest artists in advance of the show. I look forward to Phonica: Six (Monday 17 July) already!

My long weekend in St Andrews as StAnza Festival's Digital Poet in Residence for 2017 was an early year highlight. Aside from catching up, briefly or at length, with some old friends in poetry and otherwise, and meeting some great new poets & people, I enjoyed presenting my work to an attentive audience that made the effort to come along early on a Saturday morning to listen to me speak about my approach to poetry. What was billed and began as a talk by me morphed, as was in fact my intention and hope, into a multi-pronged discussion with most people in the audience contributing something valuable to the conversation. Thanks to Andy Jackson for his introduction and management of the event. In my capacity as 'in residence' I remained active for the entirety of the weekend, and therefore found it an intense experience - a challenge I quite enjoyed meeting, especially as I watched each piece I produced over the five days of the festival departing my laptop and being installed, both physically and digitally, in various positions and locations in The Byre Theatre. Special thanks must go to the indefatigable Annie Rutherford for all her work in making all of this come together.

A couple of weeks prior to St Andrews I was in Nicosia, and very happy to read at the Neoterismoi Toumazou space in the old town as a guest of the Neo Toum collective in partnership with Moufflon Bookshop - an established hub of literature and art not only in the island but also the Middle East and beyond. Reading from recent work to a mixed art & literature audience, as well as an Irish contingent that included the Irish Ambassador to Cyprus, I was pleased to receive some enthusiastic responses to the work. One of these led to an impromptu improvised collaboration with sound artist Pan Mina, to be released eventually in some form... Maria Toumazou, Orestis Lazouras and Marina Xenofontos, collectively Neoterismoi Toumazou, have made a mark on a vibrant art scene in the island in a short space of time with their blend of fashion, art, design, poetry, publishing and performance, and it was great to learn while I was there that they would be special guests at the Cyprus Pavilion during this year's Venice Biennale.

A pleasure also to be involved in Poetry Now 2017 as part of the Mountains to Sea festival in Dun Laoghaire. Poetry Now curator Alice Lyons’ intention when she sought to involve gorse in the festival was to present a multidisciplinary event with an innovative/experimental edge as exemplified by the material we publish – and I thought that through the performances of Aodán McCardle and Suzanne Walsh, as well as the presentation of my own work from if we keep drawing cartoons, we went some way towards achieving that. The event ended with a reception launching gorse no. 8, with Dimitra Xidous reading from her excellent essay ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs’ that opens the issue.

Two more readings in April bring us (more or less) up to date. On Saturday 15th I was the 'literary' representative at the long-running, primarily music series Listen At, which currently takes place upstairs at Arthurs Pub on Thomas Street. It was an eclectic affair, and I was particularly struck by the collaboration between experimental composer and pianist Martin O'Leary & uillean piper Mick O'Brien, which though on the surface appeared slightly counterintuitive I thought worked brilliantly. I felt my reading divided the audience: some wondering what the hell I was reading and whether this was poetry, and some responsive to and expressing keen interest in my approach.

And on Sunday 30 April I read upstairs in another Dublin pub, this time Devitts on Camden Street, as part of an event called Cross-Atlantic Readings which was organised by Julie Morrissy in conjunction with the Canada 150 Conference at UCD. Three Dublin writers (Julie, Sue Rainsford, and myself) 'opened' for four writers from Canada presenting varying approaches to writing. An excellent evening of readings through which I was particularly interested to encounter the work of Gregory Betts.

gorse No. 8

‘Excuse me but I just have to explode this body off me…’

gorse no. 8 is now out, featuring essays by Alice Butler, Sinéad Gleeson, Diarmuid Hester, Richard Kovitch, and Dimitra Xidous; fiction by Sheila Armstrong, Alex McElroy, Colm O'Shea, David Rose, and Hugh Smith; interviews with Dragana Jurisic (by Orla Fitzpatrick), and Ulay (by Margarita Meklina); Irish by Máirtín Coilféir, Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, and Alan Titley.

I'm pleased to be publishing poetry by Ivy Alvarez in the form of six multifarious poems; 'Aristophanes' People', a sequence by Kevin Cahill on gender diversity and the boundaries of the gender construct; three full colour brut art poems by SJ Fowler exploring handwriting, markmaking, illustration and legibility; and four poems by Melissa Lee-Houghton from a recent body of work.

Susan Tomaselli's editorial, taking in among others Claude Cahun, Kathy Acker and Francis Bacon, is published online, and is accessible with a password printed in each copy.

Cover artwork and design is, as ever, by Niall McCormack.

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Join us for launch 2.0 (The City launch) on Wednesday 19 April 2017 at 7.30pm in The Liquor Rooms (5 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2) with readings by Sheila Armstrong, Sinéad Gleeson, Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, Colm O’Shea, and Dimitra Xidous.

Phonica: Five

Phonica returns with an exciting new partner venue and expanded international dimension! Full details below:


Phonica: Five

Monday 24 April 2017
7.30pm 
Boys School, Smock Alley Theatre
Admission: €6.00 / €4.00

with
Estevo Creus & Keith Payne
Kate Ellis
Laura Hyland
Anthony Kelly & David Stalling
Robert Herbert McClean
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir


 

Phonica: Five features six exciting acts from Ireland, Spain and Iceland presenting a blend of songwriting and sound improvisation; poetry incorporating architecture and design; ‘musique concrète’; translation; poetry and audiovisual art; cello and electronics; and subversions of the expectations around spoken word performance.

Phonica is a primarily poetry and music series with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, programmed and hosted since early 2016 by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, Phonica aims to explore compositional and performative ideas and to encourage a melting pot of audiences and artists from across artforms.

Estevo Creus was a founding member of the poetry publishing house Letras de Cal and of the theatre group Talía. His collections include: Poemas da cidade oculta (Edicións Xerais, 1996), Areados (Miguel González Garcés Prize, Deputación de A Coruña 1996), Teoría do Lugar (Eusebio Lorenzo Baleirón Prize, Edicións de O Castro, 1999), Decrúa (Fiz Vergara Vilariño Prize, Espiral Mayor, 2003), Facer merzbau non ou posible? (Non Ou Edicións, 2007). O libro dos cans (Franouren Ediciones, 2010), Balea2 (Edicións Positivas, 2011). Creus is a member of the group Non Ou Edicións and of the multidisciplinary company Traspediante. He is currently collaborating with the pianist Pablo Seoane in No Lugar do Lugar, an improv. poetry and music show. "He is indebted to the European avant-garde, in particular to Dadaist rebelliousness, radical dislocation, and deep distrust of language".

Keith Payne is the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award winner for 2015-2016. His debut collection Broken Hill (Lapwing Publications, 2015) was followed by Six Galician Poets (Arc Publications, 2016). He is founder and co-director of POEMARIA Festival of Poetry, Vigo and The La Malinche Readings. He lives in Vigo, Galicia with his partner the musician Su Garrido Pombo, where he translates both from Galego and Spanish.

Robert Herbert McClean is an experimental writer and audio-visual artist. His work has appeared in The White Review, gorse, The Irish Times, and Poetry Ireland Review. His debut book Pangs! (2015) is available from Test Centre, and his debut album, ∞ - aka Infinity (2016) was released by Blank Editions.

Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and musician. Her work often involves the structure of invisible things and she is known for her unusual poetic bridge between artistic mediums.

Laura Hyland is an artist and composer from Wexford. She performs solo, and with her group Clang Sayne which she initiated in 2008 to combine her interests in songwriting and sound improvisation, and with whom she will release her 2nd album, The Round Soul of the World later this month. Her music has been described as "exhilarating in its refusal to conform" (The Wire magazine, UK), and "showing an uncategorisable approach to songcraft" (Tokafi magazine DE). Her current solo performance incorporates poetry, traditional and contemporary folk song, voice and guitar improvisation, spoken word and storytelling.

Anthony Kelly & David Stalling have been collaborating on a series of sound and visual works since 2003. Together they make sound and video installations. Their work encompasses a shared practice of recycling ‘objets trouveés’ of sound, visual and text material in their ongoing collaborative sessions. The juxtaposition of contrasting material results in a series of audio/ visual ‘musique concrète’ pieces. Kelly and Stalling also perform live improvisations, as a duo as well as with others, including Strange Attractor, The Quiet Club, Robert Curgenven and Jennifer Walshe. Some of their recent performances include listen | compose | perform, Henrietta Street, Dublin, In-stream, Ulster University, Belfast; Just Listening, LSAD Limerick; the i-and-e festival, Dublin; They founded the sound art label Farpoint Recordings in 2005, publishing projects by artists such as Quiet Music Ensemble, Karen Power, Stephen Vitiello, Fergus Kelly and Linda O’Keeffe, and many others alongside their own work.

Kate Ellis is a versatile musician dedicated to the performance of New and World Music. As Cellist and artistic director of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading new music group, Kate has performed and broadcast throughout Ireland, Europe, Australia and the US. She is a member of Ergodos Musicians, Tarab and Yurodny, three ensembles exploring the interpretation of traditional and contemporary music, and has performed with Bobby McFerrin, Tom Jones, Martin Hayes, Iarla O Lionaird, Gavin Friday and Karan Casey amongst others. Kate released a CD of new works for Cello and Electronics on the Diatribe label in 2014. “Kate Ellis has an admirable reputation as an instinctive and technically brilliant musician” - The Irish Examiner.


TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Phonica acknowledges generous funding support from The Arts Council of Ireland under its Festivals and Events Scheme.

gorse No. 7

‘Literature is the question minus the answer.’

gorse No. 7 is now out. Themed around the concept of 'codes', its cover art is as ever by Niall McCormack, and each copy comes with a 'one-time pad' for its decoding. The issue features essays from Scott Esposito, Jonathan Gibbs, John Z Komurki, Shona McCombes, and Pierre Senges (translated by Jacob Siefring); fiction from Chris Beausang, Owen Booth, Celine Fox, Anthony McGuinness, and CD Rose; Irish writing from Colm Breathnach & Liam Mac Cóil; and an interview with Alan Moore by Pádraig Ó Méalóid.

I'm very happy to be publishing poetry from Cork-based Sheila Mannix in the form of 'Burning Boat', a long hybrid poem; three new poems, including a triptych, by Michael Naghten Shanks (Dublin); four poems by Brooklyn-based Chris Campanioni from his project 'The Internet is for Real'; and four visual erasure poems by John Rodzvilla (Boston, MA).

Susan Tomaselli's editorial 'Falsing (After Marconi)' is a meditation on coding and transmission through "radio and otherworldly broadcasts," in which, in addition to Marconi, there are mentions or quotes from Tom McCarthy, Brion Gysin, Tacita Dean, WG Sebald's Rings of Saturn, and Finnegan's Wake.

You can order issue 7 from the gorse shop. It will soon also be available from our stockists.

In the meantime, join us to celebrate the launch of gorse No. 7 on Wednesday 11 January in The Liquor Rooms (5 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2) with readings from Chris Beausang, Anthony McGuinness, Sheila Mannix, and Michael Naghten Shanks. 7pm start, and admission is free.

Phonica: Four

The fourth edition of Phonica takes place on Wednesday 19 October, and we're excited to be joined by Martín Bakero, Susan Connolly, John Kearns, Neil Ó Lochlainn, Elizabeth Hilliard and David Lacey for a set of performances and presentations traversing the realms of sound poetry, electronic music, visual poetry, improvisation, and more.

about Phonica


Phonica: Four
Wednesday 19 October 2016
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
8pm start
admission free

Martín Bakero has presented performances, lectures, films, expositions, installations and radio programs in many locations throughout Europe and North, Central and South America. He has experimented with combinatorial, permutation, genetic, astrobiology, quantum mechanics, sound, vision and psychics arts. He studied electroacoustic composition at the conservatory of Paris and has taught in the Universities of Paris, México and Chile specialising in severe personality disorders and sound poetry. He created the pneumatic and electropneumatic poetry, he’s working now in “Acousemantic” poetry. Recently he made creative sound residences and performances in Avatar (Québec), National center for arts (México) and Proposta (Barcelona). He’s member of LaBoRaToiRe , Motor Nightingale, Buzos Tácticos, M’Other, Futures Primitives, Mutiques and pnEUmAtIkOs, where he works with other artistes, scientists, mystics in different rehearsals about the bounds between poetry, music, vision and reality. He created the festival Festina Lente and the Laboratory of electropneumatic poetry (Laboratoire d’electropoésie acousmantique) in Paris. All these fields that he explores allow him to give birth to transversal and unprecedented performances. In his shows, he drives a trance where the breath becomes alive. He uses especially poems moving, projected on his body, on his collaborators and screens. He also specializes his voice in multiphony, modified in live by acousmantic filters. He explores the boundaries between sound, sense, senses, nonsense, smell, vision, action, hallucination, gesture in poetry, always seeking the opening of the limits of poetry and news realities.

Susan Connolly lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth. Her first full-length collection For the Stranger was published by Dedalus Press in 1993. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry in 2001. In the same year she received a Publications Grant from the Heritage Council of Ireland for A Salmon in the Pool, a literary and place-names map of the river Boyne from source to sea. Collaborations with writer and photographer Anne-Marie Moroney include Stone and Tree Sheltering Water (1998), Race to the Sea (1999), Ogham: Ancestors Remembered in Stone (2000) and Winterlight (2002). Her poems have been published in journals and magazines throughout Ireland and the U.K, are included in the Field Day Anthology Vol IV, Voices and Poetry of Ireland and Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916, and have been broadcast on The RTÉ Poetry Programme. Her second collection Forest Music was published by Shearsman Books in 2009. Shearsman also published her chapbook The Sun-Artist: a book of pattern poems in 2013, and her third book Bridge of the Ford, a collection of visual poetry, in June 2016.

John Kearns has published poetry in a variety of publications and his long poem 'begs dull' was selected for inclusion in the recent Irish edition of Viersomes (Veer Press, London). He is currently working on a volume loosely addressing hoarding. He has worked extensively as a translator from Polish and edited the journal Translation Ireland for 10 years. He also edited the collection Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods, Debates (London, Continuum: 2008). He holds a PhD from DCU and worked for several years in academia. He is particularly interested in issues relating to mental health and is currently training as a psychotherapist.

Neil Ó Lochlainn is a double bassist, traditional flute player and composer from Ireland. He has studied at the Cork School of Music, the Banff Centre, the S.I.M (school for improvisational music) workshop, New York and the Brhaddhvani Institute, Chennai. He is a founding member of Ensemble Ériu (TG4 Gradam Ceoil recipients 2015) and in 2015 he formed Cuar, a group which combines improvisation, chamber music and irish traditional music. From 2012-2015 he perfomed regularly with the late jazz guitar master Louis Stewart.

Elizabeth Hilliard is a soprano from Dublin. She sings a wide range of repertoire, bringing a dramatic quality and emotional intensity to her performances. She combines pinpoint accuracy and razorsharp musicianship with her passion and relish for performing music by living composers. Elizabeth is a co-director (with David Bremner) of Béal, a production company committed to exploring the relationship between sung and spoken word.  The pair have brought international figures such as Robert Ashley, Tom Johnson, Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox to Dublin. In October 2016, Divine Arts Record are releasing ‘Sea to the West’ Elizabeth’s debut disc, featuring works for soprano plus electronics by Mulvey, Bremner, Fox and Buckley. She also features on Mulvey’s CD Akanos released on the Navona Records Label.  From December 2015 to March 2016 she was musician in residence at dlrLexIcon supported by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Current projects include: Don’t Walk - a 45-minute piece from video-artist Mihai Cucu and composer Gráinne Mulvey, for guitar, cello, soprano, electronics and video; Béal 2016: Inappropriate Moments - directing ensembÉal in performances of vocal ensemble music by Jennifer Walshe; Logical Fallacies - a 45 minute work for viola and soprano by David Bremner, performed with Andreea Banciu.

David Lacey is a musician from Dublin, working at the intersection between improvisation and composition. He uses percussion, objects, cassettes and crude electronics, as well as making studio constructions. He has been featured on releases from labels such as Another Timbre, Confront, Copy for your Records, Fort Evil Fruit & Room Temperature. Alongside composers Rob Casey and Conal Ryan, he co-curates the concert series ‘Reception’.

gorse No. 6

Issue 6 of gorse is now out.

It features original essays from Dylan Brennan, Liam Cagney, Dominique Cleary, Lauren Elkin, Oliver Farry, Daniel Fraser, Thomas McNally and Joanna Walsh; new fiction from Gavin Corbett, Lauren de Sa Naylor, John Holten, Bridget Penney and David Rose; an interview with Geoff Dyer by Rob Doyle; and an Irish language section (edited by new Irish language editor Aifric Mac Aodha) with work from Simon Ó Faoláin & Colm Ó Ceallacháin.

Poetry in gorse No. 6 comes from long-time contributor SJ Fowler in the form of 'Estates', four cross-referencing, border-hopping poems; recent work from Aodán McCardle representing reflections on a year's worth of language use and images encountered on various media; four new pieces by Julie Morrissy taken from a book-length work-in-progress; and three original poems in the Galician by Chus Pato, accompanied by translations from Keith Payne.

Susan Tomaselli's editorial 'Je est un autre' revolves around Borges and notions of identity. It includes an extract - a translation of a sentence from a short story by Borges - from artist Katie Holten's book About Trees, which is itself written in trees - a new typeface Holten made especially for the project.

The cover image is once again by award-winning designer Niall McCormack.

gorse No. 6 is available to order directly from our web shop.

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Please join us for the issue launch on Thursday 25 August in The Liquor Rooms (5 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2) with readings by Dominique Cleary, Gavin Corbett and Julie Morrissy. Start time is 7pm and admission is free.

gorse interview on 3:AM Magazine

Susan Tomaselli & I were recently interviewed by 3:AM Magazine's Tristan Foster for a feature on gorse.

In response to his perceptive questions we discuss the journal's history, scope, outlook and goals, and offer thoughts on editing a print journal with an interest in experimental writing as well as related topics such as the potential of literature, the avant-garde, and "transgressing boundaries".

We also announce plans for an associated imprint set to begin operations in 2017. A publishing statement will follow, but we were very happy to reveal that the first two titles will be an anthology of essays edited by Joanna Walsh, and Subcritical Tests, a book of collaborative poetry by Ailbhe Darcy & SJ Fowler.

An excerpt from Subcritical Tests appeared in gorse No. 3. Below is Ailbhe Darcy & SJ Fowler at the Cork leg of Yes But Are We Enemies:




The feature was published on Bloomsday 2016. Many thanks to Tristan Foster and to 3:AM Magazine.

Phonica: Three

For the third edition of Phonica we will be joined by Michelle Hall, Keith Lindsay, Aodán McCardle, Michael Naghten Shanks, Dylan Tighe and Suzanne Walsh for a blend of sound, word, image and performance rooted in multidisciplinary practice and innovation.

Phonica is a Dublin-based poetry and music venture with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, Phonica aims to provide an outlet for the exploration and presentation of new ideas, a space where practitioners from different artforms can converse, and an environment conducive to collaborative enterprise and improvisation.

Phonica: Three
8pm, Wednesday 15 June 2016
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
Admission Free

Michelle Hall is a visual artist who works with a variety of materials and processes and her work often takes the form of video with scripted voiceover. Throughout her practice she uses objects, images, details and textures as catalysts for narratives that fall somewhere between fact, fiction and myth. She recently graduated from the MA Art in the Contemporary World programme at NCAD with a first class honours and received the Artist’s Support Scheme Bursary from Fingal Arts Office in 2014 and 2015. She also collaborates with other practitioners and has shown collaborative projects at IMMA, Triskel and Pallas Projects. She has exhibited work in group shows at Block T, MART, Draíocht, The LAB and Catalyst Arts as well as other venues across Ireland, France and the UK. She presented her first solo exhibition ‘The Lament of the Jade Phoenix’ at Steambox Gallery in January of this year.

Keith Lindsay is a Dublin based sound artist who works with a wide range of media including music, sound, projection, film, sculpture, and electronics. His recent projects include a solo exhibition "Soundscapes" at the Pallas Project Studios and a new sound works for the Nag Gallery Dublin. He is a member of the experimental arts collective 'The Water Project' which he has performed with in Paris, London, Kiev, Cork & Dublin. His work as a sound designer has been featured in TV documentaries, feature films, short films and interactive media.

Aodán McCardle is a painter, a poet, gardener, tattooist, designer, maker, father, he has delivered babies warm in the dark and wrapped the dead in white hospital cotton. He is a co-editor at Veer Books. His PhD is on Action as Articulation of the Contemporary Poem though physicality and doubt are the site of meaning and the stance respectively where the action operates. His way into collaboration was as part of London Under Construction LUC. His current practice is improvised performance/writing/drawing as a finding out. He grew up in the mountains, moved to the city, lives by the sea.

Michael Naghten Shanks lives in Dublin and is editor of The Bohemyth. Recent publications include the special 'Rising Generation' issue of Poetry Ireland Review and The Best New British And Irish Poets 2016 anthology from Eyewear Publishing. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. He has read his work at numerous events, most recently during the International Literature Festival Dublin. Year of the Ingénue (Eyewear Publishing, 2015) is his debut poetry pamphlet. He tweets @MichaelNShanks.

Dylan Tighe is a musician, actor and theatre-maker. His second album Wabi-Sabi Soul - a one-track gapless song-cycle was released in April. It was hailed by The Irish Times as "framing reflective music with remarkable eloquence". His radio drama for RTÉ Record, based around his debut album of the same name, was nominated for the Prix Europa Radio Prize.

Suzanne Walsh is an audio/visual artist and writer from Wexford based currently in Dublin. She uses performative lectures, fiction and voice to explore  various themes, sometimes around the relationships between animal/humans as well as querying the borders of the self. She also collaborates with film-makers, musicians and other artists frequently. She is part of the Hissen sound group performing in IMMA in June, and is taking part in an upcoming show in The Lab Gallery in November called 'A Different Republic'. She is an editor of Critical Bastards magazine and is published recently in gorse journal.

gorse: art in words at ILF Dublin

On Friday 27 May we'll be at a secret location* as part of International Literature Festival Dublin 2016. I was delighted to be asked to programme this event, which I curated around the gorse tagline 'art in words' and which will feature Kimberly Campanello, Maria Fusco, Robert Herbert McClean and Suzanne Walsh.

9pm start, entry €5.00 - Book Here. Full details below:


gorse is “the most vital and outward-looking of Irish literary journals”, featuring long-form narrative essays, original fiction, poetry, interviews and more. An exploration of the potential of literature, gorse is interested in writing where lines between genres blur, and in intersections with other forms of art and culture. For this special event, curated by poetry editor Christodoulos Makris and taking place at a venue to be disclosed to ticket holders on the evening of the performance, gorse presents four writers whose work has appeared in its pages, and with connections to the audio-visual arts.

Kimberly Campanello’s previous poetry publications include her debut collection Consent and the limited edition book Imagines.

Maria Fusco is a Belfast-born writer working across criticism, fiction and theory. Her most recent work, Master Rock, is a repertoire for a mountain, commissioned by Artangel and BBC Radio 4.

Robert Herbert McClean is an experimental writer and audio-visual artist. His debut book Pangs! is available from Test Centre.

Suzanne Walsh is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work often draws on ideas around poetic truth and the human/animal divide.


* to be revealed at time of booking.

Compass Lines #2

We're in Belfast for Compass Lines #2, where I'll be in conversation with Miriam Gamble and Nerys Williams, and where the poets will present their collaboration City of Two Suns, specially commissioned for the event and published that day by the Irish Writers Centre. In addition, earlier in the day they will deliver a joint writing workshop in the Ulster Museum to a group composed of participants in various existing writing classes in Belfast.

Compass Lines is a writers’ exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing.

Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts Centre as partner venue.


Compass Lines #2
Miriam Gamble & Nerys Williams
Wednesday 11 May 2016, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast
7.30pm, entry via Eventbrite €8/€6 or on the door €10/€8

Miriam Gamble is from Belfast, but now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of both Oxford and Queens University Belfast and in 2007 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her pamphlet with Tall-lighthouse entitled This Man’s Town. Her first full-length collection, The Squirrels are Dead (2010) won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011, and Pirate Music followed in 2014, both of which are published by Bloodaxe.

Originally from West Wales, Nerys Williams lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin and is a Fulbright Alumnus of UC Berkeley. She has published poems and essays widely and is the author of A Guide to Contemporary Poetry (Edinburgh UP, 2011) and a study of contemporary American poetics, Reading Error (Peter Lang, 2007). Nerys’s first volume, Sound Archive (Seren, 2011), was shortlisted for the Felix Denis (Forward) prize and won the Rupert and Eithne Strong first volume prize in 2012. She is the current holder of the Poetry Ireland Ted McNulty Poetry Prize.

Review of The Architecture of Chance in Trumpet

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 his perceptive and generous reading of the book, and to Poetry Ireland's Paul Lenehan for commissioning it for Trumpet.

The issue also features an essay by Enda Coyle-Greene - arising out of last year's cross-stream: ways of writing project - in which she writes about the composition of her poem 'Metathesis'.

Other articles in Trumpet 5 include reviews of books by Breda Wall Ryan and Connie Roberts, an appreciation of C. K. Williams by Michael O'Loughlin, a piece on poetry in Belfast by Stephen Connolly, and poems by Blake Morrison, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Gabriel Rosenstock.

gorse No. 5

Issue 5 of gorse was published at the end of March, ushering in the second phase of the journal: publication frequency is now up to three times a year (March, July, November) with the page count set at 200 pages. The new single issue price is €13.00.

“It’s certainly a work of great beauty even before you open it. After only four issues it’s become one of the most regarded journals around.” – Daniel McCabe, Magalleria

In this issue I'm proud and excited to be publishing brand new poetry from SJ Fowler ('Prism' - from a sequence celebrating Edward Snowden), Linda Kemp (four poems), Alan Jude Moore ('Gabriel'), Doireann Ní Ghríofa (two poems), and James Wilkes (the sequence 'Sputniks').

Susan Tomaselli's editorial 'The Geometry Blinked Ruin Unimaginable' introduces the themes running through the issue, discussing among much else Andy Warhol's 'Death and Disaster' series, Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers, Marinetti and The Futurist Manifesto, and Picasso's 'Guernica'.

gorse No. 5 also includes essays by Diarmuid Hester, Darragh McCausland, Nathan Hugh O’Donnell and Benjamin Robinson; fiction by Will Ashon, Maria Fusco, Olivia Heal, D Joyce-Ahearne, Helen McClory, Simon Okotie and Eimear Ryan; interviews with Owen Hatherley by Robert Barry and with Sarah Pierce by Claire Potter; and aphorisms by Susana Medina, translated by Jonathan Dunne.

You can buy gorse No. 5 individually from the website or you can purchase a subscription. Back issues (except No. 1) are also available from the gorse shop. In addition, the journal is stocked in selected bookshops.

Please join us in celebrating the launch of gorse no. 5 in The Liquor Rooms (5 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2) on Wednesday 20 April with readings by D Joyce-Ahearne, Darragh McCausland, Alan Jude Moore, Nathan Hugh O’Donnell, and Eimear Ryan. Start time is 7.30pm and admission is free.

Phonica: Two

Phonica is a Dublin-based poetry and music venture with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, it aims to provide an outlet for the exploration and presentation of new ideas, a space where practitioners from different artforms can converse, and an environment conducive to collaborative enterprise and improvisation.

Media:
Phonica: One compilation video | Phonica feature in the current issue of Totally Dublin (April 2016)


For Phonica: Two, the curators will be joined by Fergus Kelly, James King, Paul Roe and Catherine Walsh to explore spaces between sound poetry, performance, new music, experimental poetics, invented instruments and collaboration.

Wednesday 13 April, 8pm
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
Admission Free

Fergus Kelly is a sound artist from Dublin working with field recording, soundscape composition, invented instruments and improvisation. He has shown nationally and internationally and received many Arts Council awards. In 2005 he established a CDR label and website, Room Temperature, as an outlet for his solo and collaborative work, producing the CDs Unmoor (2005), Material Evidence (2006), Bevel (2006) (with David Lacey), A Host Of Particulars (2007), Strange Weather (2007), Leaching The Pith (2008), Swarf (2009), Fugitive Pitch (2009), Long Range (2010), Unnatural Actuality (2014) and Quiet Forage (2015) (with David Lacey). Albums on other labels: A Congregation Of Vapours, (Farpoint Recordings 2012), Neural

James King grew up in Larne, Co. Antrim and has lived in Derry for twenty-five years. Since retiring from his post as Course Director for Community Drama at the University of Ulster in 2004, he has developed his career as performance artist and sound poet while maintaining his interest in creative activities with vulnerable groups in the community. His publications include Moving Pitches (yes Publications, 2008) and Furrowed Lives (self-published, 2012).

Paul Roe (Clarinets) creatively combines three of his most passionate interests-performance, teaching & presence-based coaching, in a richly rewarding artistic life. As a collaborative artist he particularly is engaged by the intellectual and conceptual discourse of interdisciplinary practice.

Catherine Walsh is from Dublin and currently lives in Limerick. She is the author of nine books, and her work is featured in a number of anthologies, including the Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2001) and Centrifugal: Contemporary Poetry of Guadalajara and Dublin (EBL-Cielo Abierto / Conaculta, Mexico City, 2014). She co-edits the ‘resting’ Journal and hardPressed Poetry with Billy Mills, and she was Holloway Lecturer on the Practice of Poetry at University of California, Berkeley for 2012/13.

Christodoulos Makris' latest book The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press, 2015) was chosen as a poetry book of the year by RTÉ Arena and 3:AM Magazine. He is featured in Poetry Ireland Review's special issue 'The Rising Generation' (April 2016).

Olesya Zdorovetska is a Dublin-based performer and composer originally from Kyiv, Ukraine. Her solo projects include ‘Subconscious Songs from Ukraine’, exploring traditional music, ‘Before Speech’ songs without words in search of a musical proto-language, ‘Undefined Pleasure’, ‘Poesias Espanolas’, an investigation of Spanish poetry, ‘The Docks’ a sonic response to social and political life and ‘Sounds of Telling’, based on Ukrainian contemporary poetry. Throughout a wide range of other collaborations she frequently performs contemporary classical, jazz, salsa and improvised music. Her current artistic practice also includes scores and sound design for film, theatre and contemporary dance.

gorse showcase at Poems Upstairs

I'm pleased to be programming and introducing a gorse poetry showcase for the April edition of Poems Upstairs, featuring readings by Colin Herd, Robert Herbert McClean and Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

Produced in association with Poetry Ireland.

Wednesday 6 April 2016, 7.00pm
Books Upstairs, 17 D'Olier Street, Dublin 1
Tickets €6 (includes a glass of wine)



Colin Herd (gorse No. 1) is a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Glasgow. His books include too ok (BlazeVOX, 2011), Glovebox (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2014) and Oberwildling – with SJ Fowler (Austrian Cultural Forum, 2015). Collaborative artist books with the artists Cat Outram (The Open Wound in My Living Room) and Susan Wilson (blots) have been shown at the Royal Scottish Academy and Edinburgh Printmakers. He is co-director of The Sutton Gallery and regularly hosts poetry events there.

Robert Herbert McClean (gorse No. 4) is an experimental writer and audio-visual artist. His work has appeared in The White Review, The Irish Times, and is forthcoming in Poetry Ireland Review. His artist statement can be viewed on his website, and his debut book Pangs! is available from Test Centre.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa (gorse No. 5) is a bilingual writer whose work has appeared in The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Poetry, and elsewhere. Among her awards are the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary. Her most recent book is Clasp (Dedalus Press, 2015), shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Award. She writes "with tenderness and unflinching curiosity” (Poetry Magazine, Chicago).

Compass Lines #1

Compass Lines is a writers’ exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing.

Compass Lines aims to encourage artistic fusion and integrate a sometimes fragmented audience, geographically and otherwise, through the strategy of combining writers with various concerns and backgrounds. Eschewing their comfort zones and usual patterns of working presents a diversion and a challenge to the writers, and a way of instigating discussions about ideas of process and place that reside in contemporary writing and which are often ignored through traditional views of literature.

Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts Centre as partner venue, Compass Lines will comprise a series of enterprises, alternately in Dublin and in Belfast, each with the participation of two writers – one with connections to the north of Ireland and one to the south.

Each enterprise consists of three strands:

1/ Community Connection: the writers visit an organisation or group in the hosting city to conduct workshops. By prior arrangement.

2/ Discussion: a moderated public event during which the writers will discuss their practice, focusing on process, craft, dissemination etc. The event will include readings and scope for Q & A sessions. Public, details below.

3/ New Writing: specially-commissioned collaborative writing to be published as an individual limited edition pamphlet. Available exclusively with entry to the public discussion.


Compass Lines #1
Karl Whitney & Philip Terry
Wednesday 2 March 2016, 7.30pm, Irish Writers Centre, Dublin
Tickets via Eventbrite: €8/6 | on the door: €10/8

Karl Whitney is a writer of non-fiction whose first book, Hidden City: Adventures and Explorations in Dublin was published by Penguin in 2014. In 2013 he received the John Heygate award for travel writing. He has a BA in English and History from University College Dublin, an MA in Modernism from University of East Anglia, and a PhD in History from University College Dublin. He is a Research Associate at the UCD Humanities Institute.

Philip Terry is currently Director of the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Essex. Among his books are the lipogrammatic novel The Book of Bachelors, the edited story collection Ovid Metamorphosed, a translation of Raymond Queneau’s last book of poems Elementary Morality, and the poetry volumes Oulipoems, Oulipoems 2, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and Advanced Immorality. His novel tapestry was shortlisted for the 2013 Goldsmith’s Prize. Dante’s Inferno, which relocates Dante’s action to current day Essex, was published in 2014, as well as a translation of Georges Perec’s I Remember.

• Days, by Philip Terry & Karl Whitney, a specially commissioned pamphlet published by the Irish Writers Centre, will be available exclusively with entry to the public discussion.

• On the evening of Tuesday 1 March, Karl Whitney will visit Malahide public library to lead a writing workshop with title 'Writing About Place', co-organised with Fingal Libraries (places limited - to book please contact Malahide library); and Philip Terry will deliver a workshop on 'Poetry and Oulipo' for students at the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies, Mater Dei Institute.

Centrifugal on Mexico City Lit

The excellent online journal Mexico City Lit has published two extracts from our bilingual poetry exchange anthology Centrifugal: Contemporary Poetry of Guadalajara and Dublin.

Part one appeared last summer, and consists of Luis Eduardo García’s Spanish translation of two of my pieces followed by my versions in English of some poems by Luis Eduardo. Part two was published earlier this month, and comprises Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza's translation of a poem by Alan Jude Moore, and Catherine Walsh's versions of several shorts by Laura Solórzano.

Thanks to John Z. Komurki and Tim MacGabhann of Mexico City Lit for their interest in our project & book. There are some copies of Centrifugal still available from Books Upstairs and The Winding Stair bookshops in Dublin.

Phonica: One

Phonica is a new Dublin-based poetry and music venture with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, it aims to provide an outlet for the exploration and presentation of new ideas, a space where practitioners from different artforms can converse, and an environment conducive to collaborative enterprise and improvisation.

Phonica: One takes place on Wednesday 20 January 2016 in Jack Nealons (165 Capel Street, Dublin 1) where the curators will be joined by Linda Buckley, Nick Roth, Sue Rainsford and Maurice Scully. Admission is free and start time is 8pm. All welcome.

Linda Buckley is a composer from the Old Head of Kinsale currently based in Dublin. Her music has been described as “exquisite” (Gramophone) “strange and beautiful” (Boston Globe), “glacially majestic” (RTÉ Ten) with “an exciting body of work that marks her out as a leading figure in the younger generation of Irish composers working in the medium” (Journal of Music). Her work has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Sinfoniker Orchestra, Fidelio Trio, Irish Chamber Orchestra and at international festivals including Bang on a Can at MassMoCA, Gaudeamus Music Week Amsterdam and Seoul International Computer Music Festival. She studied Music at University College Cork and Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a Ph.D in Composition from Trinity College, where she also lectures, and was RTÉ lyric fm Composer in Residence 2011/13.

Christodoulos Makris is "one of Ireland's leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics" (Rick O'Shea, The RTÉ Poetry Programme). His most recent book is The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press, 2015). He is the poetry editor of gorse journal, and in 2014 he produced and co-curated the transnational poetry collaborations project and tour Yes But Are We Enemies.

Sue Rainsford is a writer based in Dublin and Vermont. Recently, she read at Foaming at the Mouth No.5 and presented at the Art | Memory | Place research seminar at IMMA. She is currently partaking in the Writing Seminars at Bennington College, and is editor of the limited edition publication some mark made.

Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator. A fascination with emergence, cycle and structure has led to ongoing conversations with scientists and research institutions across the interweaving disciplines of mathematical biology, forest canopy ecology, marine geology and hydrology in search of a conception of music as translative epistemology. Simultaneously subsumed by an insatiable appetite for literature, his compositions often explore the philosophical implications of poetry and the symbiotic resonance of words as sound and image.

Maurice Scully was born in Dublin in 1952. Writing & publishing since the early 70s, his latest (twelfth) book, Several Dances, was published by Shearsman Books in 2014.

Olesya Zdorovetska is a Dublin-based performer and composer originally from Kiev, Ukraine. Her solo projects include ‘Subconscious Songs from Ukraine’, exploring traditional music, ‘Before Speech’ songs without words in search of a musical proto-language, ‘Undefined Pleasure’, discovering the physicality of the instrument through the body of the performer, ‘Poesias Espanolas’, an investigation of Spanish poetry, ‘The Docks’ a sonic response to social and political life and ‘Sounds of Telling’, based on Ukrainian contemporary poetry. Throughout a wide range of other collaborations she frequently performs contemporary classical, jazz, salsa and improvised music. Her current artistic practice also includes scores and sound design for film, theatre and contemporary dance.Her visual art focuses on the exploration of the relationship between photographic image, painting and reality.

gorse No. 4

Issue 4 of gorse is now out and available to buy directly from the website, where you can also purchase a subscription, or from selected bookshops. I'm proud and excited to be publishing in it new poetry from Philip Terry, Robert Herbert McClean, Kimberly Campanello and Patrick Chapman.

Philip Terry contributes a long prose poem with title 'Bird Notes'; Robert Herbert McClean's 'Excerpt from Pangs!' is six extracts from his eponymous debut collection just out from Test Centre; Kimberly Campanello's three visual poems are taken from MOTHERBABYHOME forthcoming from zimZalla in 2016; and Patrick Chapman's 14-part sequence 'The Film of My Death' channels Alfred Hitchcock and Paris - his seventh book of poetry Slow Clocks of Decay is due out from Salmon next year.

gorse No. 4 also features fiction by Adrian Duncan, Paul Kavanagh, Thomas McNally, Hugh Fulham-McQuillan, Ian Parkinson, Pierre Senges (in translation by Jacob Siefring), and Jona Xhepa; essays by Alice Butler, Daniella Cascella, Dominique Cleary, Orla Fitzpatrick, Christopher Higgs, Barry Sheils, Suzanne Walsh and Adrian Nathan West; and two interviews: Luis Chitarroni by Andrew Gallix, and Lee Rourke by Liam Jones. Susan Tomaselli's editorial, 'Wonder is Really Nothing', takes Alice in Wonderland and dream-writing as its starting point and follows it down the rabbit hole to find Joyce, Duchamp, Burroughs & Gysin, Švankmajer, Hitchcock and much more. The cover design, as ever, is from Niall McCormack. The first 150 copies are individually numbered.

We will be celebrating the launch of gorse No. 4 at The Liquor Rooms, Wellington Quay, Dublin 2, at 7pm on Wednesday 21 October 2015, with readings from the issue by Dominque Cleary, Orla Fitzpatrick, Suzanne Walsh, Jona Xhepa & more, plus music by Gar Cox. Join us.