Stone and Sea - Pafos2017 European Capital of Culture

On Monday 9 October I'll be reading at the opening of the poetry & photography exhibition Stone and Sea in Pafos Municipal Gallery.

Part of the Pafos2017 European Capital of Culture programme, Stone and Sea is "a poetic meeting and a photographic exhibition by Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot photographers, that have the stone and the sea as their points of reference; elements that are inextricably linked with the fate of Cypriot people and of crucial importance for the shaping of their temperament. The project combines a walk through rocks deeply rooted in the soil, statues and pebbles of the coastline, with the reflective gazing of the sea, which is anticipated as an uncorrupted cultural value, a place of eutopia open to diversity."

Readings by several invited poets with links to Cyprus will be accompanied by a trilingual presentation of the poems - in Greek, Turkish and English. I'm delighted that as part of this my poem 'Full Circle' from The Architecture of Chance has been translated into Greek by Despina Pyrketti and into Turkish by Aydin Mehmet Ali.

Start time is 7pm and admission is free. The exhibition runs until 23 October. My thanks to Nadia Stylianou and the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus for their invitation and sponsorship.

Digital Poet in Residence at StAnza International Poetry Festival 2017

I'm excited to be participating in StAnza 2017 as Digital Poet in Residence.

StAnza is Scotland's International Poetry Festival taking place in St Andrews, Fife, each spring. Recognised as one of the leading poetry festivals in Europe, over the years it has featured a strong list of contemporary poets from around the world. This year sees the 20th annual edition, which will run from 1st to 5th March and will feature an international lineup of over 60 poets, artists and musicians taking part in around 100 events. The main theme of StAnza 2017 is On The Road, with the festival examining all kinds of travel and journeys.

For my residency at StAnza 2017 I have devised a project with title Browsing History for which I will use simple text and image editing tools to make poetry out of my personal Internet browsing, in real time. The resulting pieces will be erected as physical and subsequently as digital installations, and will cumulatively provide an oblique record of this year's festival and its setting in time and place, filtered through my online reading habits over the five days of the festival. Further to algorithmic influence, clickbait, and what I get regularly drawn to, I'm particularly keen to have my browsing contaminated by suggested reads; I am therefore inviting anyone interested to send me, over the period 1-5 March, links to news stories, articles or other current material they find interesting. Get in touch via Twitter (@c_makris #StAnza17).

Underpinning this performative residency are my work and interest in the concept of 'reading as writing' and our 'toggling' between physical and digital communication and personas. I will talk about the mechanics and ideas behind the residency and read from recent work during a 'meet the artist' event at the Byre Theatre on Saturday 4 March (11am start, free). In addition to this formal event, I will perform two half hour 'live sessions' over the weekend during which my computer will be connected to a large screen in the theatre foyer and therefore make my compositional process visible.

Follow StAnza's social media accounts and/or my twitter feed for updates.

My thanks to Eleanor Livingstone, Festival Director, and Annie Rutherford, Programme Co-ordinator, for their invitation to participate in StAnza 2017, and their cooperation towards delivering this project.

Here are two poems I made earlier this year using the process I will employ during the residency.

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.

Guest Speaker at York St John University

On Monday 14 March I'll be giving a talk at York St John University as part of the Faculty of Arts visiting speaker programme, for which "artists and curators come to YSJ to give one-off artist talks, lead focussed tutorial and critique sessions or work alongside a full-time academic member of staff to design and deliver a project or module." My thanks to Lucy O'Donnell for the invitation.

I'll be speaking on the interconnected strands of my practice - compositional, editorial & curatorial - with various visual aids and material as suggested further reading. With that in mind (and also looking ahead to a forthcoming event next month) here's James King & Ellen Factor performing at the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry in 2014 as part of Yes But Are We Enemies:

 

Futures at the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens

I'll be travelling to Athens to join a presentation of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis, edited by Theodoros Chiotis and published by Penned in the Margins, at the Onassis Cultural Centre on Thursday 18 February.

Having last been in Athens when I was 8 years old, I particularly look forward to setting my hazy memories and mediated views of the place against its current, crisis-engulfed state; this fractured and multi-dimensional relationship to and impression of Greece provided in fact the impetus for my long poem 'Civilisation's Golden Dawn: A Slide Show' - my contribution to Futures.

Osmosis at Filmbase for Temple Bar Arts and Politics Weekend

Osmosis is a visual art exhibition at Filmbase in Dublin's Temple Bar in which selected artists explore perceptions of memory and identity through small concept-driven objects. Curated by Debbie Paul of the Debbie Paul Gallery, the exhibition is part of 'View - Temple Bar Arts and Politics Weekend', a festival run by the Temple Bar Company to mark the 25th anniversary of the redevelopment of the area.

I'm contributing to Osmosis with 'A Social Osmosis Intimated (Life Goes On)', a new commissioned piece written as a creative response to ideas, concepts and processes in the work shown in the exhibition. It will be available during the exhibition - and will also serve as an introduction to a subsequent publication from Chrome Yellow Books. Also printed will be short essays by the four participating artists: 'Beauty in Mindfulness' by Sam Tho Duong; 'Meaning and Memories' by Mirei Takeuchi; 'Identity' by Eunmi Chun; and 'Capturing Memories' by Mitzuki Takahashai.

In addition, on Saturday 21 November at 12 noon I will be taking part in a public discussion exploring themes raised in the artists' essays. The event will take place at Filmbase, and will feature participants from diverse backgrounds adding to the idea of identity in the wider community. Free, but booking is required.

The exhibition runs between 19 and 22 November 2015 and will also include café conversations and floor talks with the exhibition artists.

Prague Microfestival 2015

I'm excited to be taking part in this year's (7th) edition of the Prague Microfestival, an international festival of innovative, intermedia and translocal poetry, taking place 18-20 May 2015:

"PMF’s aim is twofold: to invigorate the Czech literary scene with up-to-date creative impulses from abroad (so far, those have been linguistically experimental poetry, intermedia writing, conceptual poetry, poetry performance and poetry collective) and to put Prague back on the map of global avant-garde capitals." Read more about the festival, including its history, here.

I'll be taking part in two events, both on Tuesday 19 May:

1/ Being Translocal: Writing In-Between Spaces (tranzitdisplay, entry free / vstupné zdarma, language / jazyk: ENG): The writers Louis Armand (Prague), Christodoulos Makris (Dublin), Philip Hammial (Sydney) and Donna Stonecipher (Berlin) discuss writing in-between the national literatures, i.e. writing as a translocal writer. Moderated by David Vichnar and Olga Pek.
Start time: 16.00

2/ Conceptual Music and Text Night (Theatre NOD, entry 80 Kč, language: CZ & ENG): The second PMF night will start off with the Australian avant-gardist Philip Hammial and a reading incorporating a live mass-collaboration Twitter poem by the Ireland-based Cypriot Christodoulos Makris. The second half of the evening comprises a unique series of verbal compositions, classical singing and experimental music by Samuel Vriezen from Netherlands and Ian Mikyska from Prague, two composers who will be accompanied by the improvisation collective Startocluster. The composition "A House for Hanne Darboven," with text by Louis Armand, will be performed as a homage to the German conceptual artist. The night wraps up with indie-folk by TEVE.
Start time: 19.00

The full programme and accompanying events include some amazing writers and artists from Europe and beyond. Massive thanks to festival director Olga Pek for the invitation, and to her organising team. Thanks also to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for supporting my participation.

Droichead Arts Centre

As part of the opening of Thomas Brezing's exhibition/installation 'The Road is Paved with Good Intentions' at the Droichead Arts Centre on Wednesday 14 January 2015, I will be doing a collaborative performance with the artist in his 'Carpet Man' persona:

"Carpet Man is an ongoing performance-based project running since 2011, revolving around a persona adopted by Thomas Brezing. Carpet Man has appeared in derelict houses, a snow-covered mountain, an abandoned pool, a beach, an old shop unit, a vandalised warehouse, a forest and several other locations. A short film documenting his journeys was produced in 2013. Christodoulos Makris is a poet, editor and curator particularly interested in experimental/innovative/conceptual writing, often the result of collaborations. His essay on Brezing's Carpet Man project appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of Visual Artists Ireland newsletter. For this performance, he will engage with Carpet Man by responding to the variously discarded material he encounters or manipulates in his journeys - as also used by Brezing for his gallery installation - with treatments of contemporary cultural detritus."

The exhibition runs from Thursday 15th January to Saturday 28th February (gallery open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am – 5pm)

Free Admission

launch of gorse no. 2

On Wednesday 19 November I'll be reading at the launch of issue 2 of gorse.



"Please join us in celebrating the launch of gorse no. 2, in the The Library Project Temple Bar, on Wednesday 19 November with readings from the issue by Claire-Louise Bennett, Dylan Brennan, Rob Doyle, Hugh Fulham-McQuillan, Christodoulos Makris & Colm O'Shea, and an exhibition of the artwork of cover designer Niall McCormack."

I'm particularly looking forward to this: there will be a special & very exciting announcement.

Camaradefest II, zimZalla & Poets Live: the videos

For the second year running, last month's Camaradefest brought together 100 poets to present brand new, specially commissioned collaborations in 50 pairs. Once again the range of approaches was extraordinarily wide, reflecting the richness of contemporary innovative poetic practice coming out of London and elsewhere. I was able to witness the last 3 sessions in their entirety, that's 30 poetic collaborations, none of which was less than engaging. The final session in particular was incredible - but I was particularly impressed & delighted by the efforts of Jow Lindsay & Anne Laure Coxam, Lila Matsumoto & Samantha Walton, Sam Riviere & Crispin Best, and Holly Pester & Emma Bennett.

Links to videos of all Camaradefest II performances are available here. Below is footage of my collaboration with Nathan Jones. Not knowing each other before beginning to write, we decided to give each other access to our subconscious by writing down our dreams every morning for a week and exchanging them, with an 'analysis' of each other's transcript to be returned the same evening. For the performance itself we decided to present only the text of the analyses in a manner that reflected the intensity of the process, the 'cross-contamination' effect between analysis and dream, and an undercurrent of competitiveness present in the exercise:



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In contrast to the large-scale nature of Camaradefest (which attracted an audience of several hundred) two days later an intimate gathering celebrated the zimZalla exhibition of poetry objects at the Hardy Tree gallery on Pancras Road through a closing reading. zimZalla is an endlessly innovative imprint run from Manchester by Tom Jenks, and its activities were appropriately marked here with a range of readings/performances by Olga Peková and Zuzana Husarova, Kimberly Campanello, Lucy Harvest Clarke, Iain Morrison, Ryan Van Winkle and Tom Jenks himself - before I closed the evening:



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The reading down in the cellar of Carr's near the Tuileries Garden in Paris last Tuesday as part of the Poets Live series attracted a good-sized anglophone crowd. The audience was particularly attentive and the vibe was serious but welcoming. Strong work by Carole Birkan & Will Cox, introduced as poets working towards their first book, was followed in each half by sessions from Freke Räihä and myself. Wonderful to talk to everyone afterwards upstairs in the bar, to see old friends and to make some new connections. Edited footage of the evening below:

zimZalla in performance

“zimZalla is a unique publishing imprint specialising in literary objects. With twenty-five objects published to date, including poetry tea bags, greetings cards, scented chocolate bars and a backwards book in a miniature coffin, zimZalla celebrates the handmade, the ephemeral and the eccentric. zimZalla at the Hardy Tree, co-curated by The Enemies Project, is a never before available opportunity to see all twenty-five objects in one place at one time. A true trip down the rabbit hole.”

I'm excited to be participating in the closing reading for the zimZalla exhibition at the Hardy Tree Gallery (119 St Pancras Road, London NW1 1UN) on Monday 27 October. Starting at 7.30pm, the event also features the TRYIE Collective (Zuzana Husarova, Olga Pekova +), Tom Jenks, Kimberly Campanello, Ryan Van Winkle & more.

Admission is free.

from Muses Walk (video)

A 5-minute home video made last October for the project & exhibition 'Transcapes / The Halted Traveler' in which I read from Muses Walk under fading light.

Transcapes / The Halted Traveler

Part of the exhibition Other Indications at the Municipal Arts Centre in Nicosia (NiMAC), 'Transcapes / The Halted Traveler' is a project co-curated by artist Maria Loizidou and researcher/curator/journalist Elena Parpa - within Parpa's larger proposal 'Exercises on Orientation' - which takes the form of a workshop of "memory recall". It makes use of work by a group of artists, architects and poets (Meletis Apostolides, Leto Kattou with Leontios Toumpouris, Marianna Christofides, Kyrillos Sarris with Giorgos Hatzimichalis, Yves Sabourin, and myself) to "approach the concept of landscape as a mnemonic and psychographic space, which is composed through personal narratives, memory overlapping, but also through travels – real and imaginary – which at times activate the desire for repositioning in space and time [... and] attempts to create the conditions for such a reorientation."

To realise 'Transcapes / The Halted Traveler', Loizidou worked with the contributors towards creating a 'carnet' (notebook) with work from each. The notebooks, though identical on the outside, contain individual and specific treatments of the question of urban landscape and memory. In my case this takes the form of having a copy of my book Muses Walk embedded into the notebook, encompassed by fragments from older posts on this blog concerning themselves with the process of the book's conception, composition and production. This material is intended to provide take-off points for discussions & workshops on the themes under consideration. The project also includes some complementary material, such as an additional notebook with a bibliography suggested by the participating artists, and a number of films, including a 5-minute 'home video' in which I read from Muses Walk, shown on a loop.

This ambitious exhibition - "with an aim of renegotiating and re-examining the procedures of curating art exhibitions" and "an experimental approach to curatorial practices" - in which I'm delighted to have been invited to take part, also marks the 20th anniversary of the centre. It opens this coming Saturday 30 November 2013 and runs until 30 March 2014.

Granby Park: a communal poem

Upstart, the arts collective that brought art and poetry to the streets of Dublin during the 2011 general election campaign, is for its second project transforming a vacant site in inner city Dublin into a pop up park and place of creativity for a period of one month, starting this coming Thursday 22 August.

I'm delighted to be involved in several ways with this brilliant initiative.

First up I'm directing an interactive poetry installation, scheduled to run throughout the project's duration, through which visitors to Granby Park will create a communal poem to mark the site. The poem will be composed using the 'exquisite corpse' technique: each contributor will add to the text while being aware of the last contributed element only.

So, visit Granby Park from 22 August for an array of free arts events, outdoor performances, cinema, live music, educational activities and a pop up café - and help write the 'Granby Park' poem by responding to the last line with three or four of your own.

Safe as Houses

My 10-minute poetry film Safe as Houses is now available to view on YouTube and on the Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions website. My thanks to Sharmilla, Sarah and Nick of Speaking Volumes for releasing/hosting it.

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I wrote the poem 'Safe as Houses' in 2010. It's composed of four separate parts: part one provided the poem's core - and was first published on the streets of Dublin in February 2011 as part of the UpStart campaign; part two was written in the style of a letter to The Irish Times, adhering to the peculiar conventions of that page and exhibiting a typical admonitory/self-congratulatory tone; part three is made of a series of bullet points describing a cyclical building process; part four is a transcription, with minor alterations, of one side of an email conversation spanning a period of 18 months.

Last summer I came across an abandoned, dilapidated house in north county Dublin the state of which encapsulated so much of what the poem came out of and what it attempted to convey that it seemed almost indecent not to try and put the two together. At first I couldn't work out how. I returned to the house in September with artist Thomas Brezing wielding a video camera and we shot several scenes of me reading from my poems, including the entire 'Safe as Houses', in that setting. Then in January I enlisted the help of film editor Oliver Fallen to make something out of the footage - who on viewing it had several eye-opening suggestions to make. A week later Brezing and I went back to the house, the operation towards the making of a film (as opposed to a record of the reading of the poem in a specific setting) pretty much fully-planned in my mind in advance, and we re-shot the whole thing.

I wanted to avoid making the result polished in any way; I wanted to retain an amateurishness and an aesthetic roughness, and to allow an element of negligence in its making - all integral to what I was trying to convey. We used no backing sound track or a separate recording of my voice, and the bare minimum of post-production tricks.

The editing process was fascinating to be involved in: watching how the experienced eye of an editor and his knowledge of his tools and their capabilities (and limitations) impacts on the finished film was a hugely valuable lesson in composition. Marrying the visual element, which is Fallen's expertise, to my interest in language and to the overall concept, was crucial. I hope we made a film that traverses the sum of its individual parts.

Poetry Parnassus: Rain of Poems

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 writers and writers involved in Poetry Parnassus. This performance has a symbolic value that serves to create an alternative image of the past and is a gesture of remembrance but also a metaphor for the survival of cities and people.

LABOUR - live performance exhibition at the LAB

I really wish I could go along to this, but somebody's got to keep the libraries open on Saturday... If you get a chance do "come and go throughout the day".

LABOUR

a live exhibition

Performances from Irish female artists

Curated by Chrissie Cadman, Amanda Coogan and Helena Walsh

The LAB, Foley Street, Dublin 1, 9.30am – 5.30 pm, 10th March 2012

LABOUR, a live exhibition, features eleven leading female artists from the island of Ireland, offering audiences unprecedented access to a huge body of live performance work by some of the most radical and exciting women artists emerging from an Irish cultural context.

 Anne Quail - Elvira Santamaria Torres - Amanda Coogan - Pauline Cummins -

Ann Maria Healy - Chrissie Cadman - Frances Mezzeti - Áine O’Dwyer

Áine Phillips - Helena Walsh - Michelle Browne

Following an average working day, the artists will perform for an 8-hour duration on Saturday, 10^th of March at The LAB Gallery. The site of The LAB Gallery, Foley street, in the historic Monto and around the corner from the Gloucester Street Magdalene Convent layers the composition of the eleven bodies of the artists with potent shadows. LABOUR explores the female body as a political site.

Live Performance from the visual arts in Ireland is currently a vibrant practice, grounded in responding with the physical body and psychological self. LABOUR is a group show providing multiple viewing experiences as individual works collide and speak to each other. The medium of live embodied practice can be a powerful tool for change. LABOUR is about transformations. 

‘LABOUR is of great historical significance.  Issues of labour and gender are particularly critical within an Irish context, and at the same time Irish women artists or women artists based in Ireland are creating some of the most exciting and challenging performance based work of our times. - Lois Keidan - the Live Art Development Agency

Audiences are welcome to come and go throughout the day.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts in Dublin

On 5 March 2007 a bomb was exploded on Baghdad's Al-Mutanabbi Street, located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic centre of bookselling in Baghdad, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, tea and tobacco stores. It has been the core of Baghdad's literary and intellectual community for many centuries.

The Al-Mutanabbi Street coalition was formed in response to the bombing by poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil in San Francisco. It initiated and completed a broadside project with contributions of 130 broadsides from 130 letterpress printers, some of which were exhibited at the Market House in Monaghan and the Central Library in Dublin last March. It's now in the process of compiling 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street', a project for which over 250 writers and artists worldwide have committed to producing three books each in a symbolic attempt to "re-assemble" the "inventory" of what was lost in the bombing.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts in Dublin is the Dublin edition of a series of events taking place around the globe on 5 March 2012 to mark the 5th anniversary of the bombing, and will feature readings, performances and exhibitions by the Ireland-based participants in 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street' and other friends of these projects. More specifically, and among other contributions, the event will include a short play, a poetry reading with musical accompaniment, a performance of poetry in translation, a short talk on the significance of the project, and exhibitions of images from books produced for the project.

The writers, performers and artists contributing to the event are Alansary, Cah-44, Evelyn Conlon, Sue Cosgrave, Djeribi, Kit Fryatt, Judy Kravis and Sarah Lewtas. The event is co-ordinated and will be introduced by Christodoulos Makris. The venue is The Winding Stair Bookshop, 40 Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin 1, and start time is 7pm. Admission is free.

Kilmainham Arts Club

On Monday 6 February 2012 I'll be performing at the Kilmainham Arts Club, a monthly event showcasing work from artists from a range of disciplines.

I'll be reading the full text from my forthcoming short book Muses Walk, accompanied by the projection onto a screen of many of the photographs I took for the project (not all of which will make the finished book). It's an opportunity for me to test the poems a month or so before publication, while the audience gets to experience the work in a live audio-visual format the immediacy of which print cannot replicate.

February's edition of the club also includes comedy and music performances, as well as photography exhibitions. The venue is the Patriot's Inn, Kilmainham, Dublin 8, and start time is 8pm. Admission is free.

the poet was in the shack

The resulting text from my shack intervention at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda last Saturday - part of Thomas Brezing's exhibition 'The Art of Failure isn't hard to Master' - is now on the gallery website. Many thanks and congratulations to all who collaborated in composing this piece. Thanks also to the gallery staff. I enjoyed shacking up with myself for a few hours and interacting with the public from there.

Footage of my reading of the text after emerging from the shack has surfaced on YouTube: