European Poetry Festival – The European Camarade: Ireland

Serena Braida and Christodoulos Makris
Nick Roth and SJ Fowler
Ella de Burca and Michael O’Mahony
Samuel Vriezen and Máighréad Medbh
Anna Belkovska and Róisín Power Hackett

The European Camarade is a pioneering literary event celebrating a near dozen of Europe’s most innovative poets in a unique collaborative format. Five brand new performances, collaborations made for the night between pairs of poets, those visiting from across Europe and those based in Ireland, will be revealed. Each will explore the true potential of contemporary poetry, from the visual, sonic, literary, improvised and conceptual, and all while creating new bonds between poets across the European continent.

This event is curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris, Maynooth University and Kildare County Council Library and Arts Service Writer-in-Residence 2018-19, in partnership with European Poetry Festival director, SJ Fowler.

This event is funded by Kildare County Council Arts Service and The Arts Council, with support by Riverbank Arts Centre.

See www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/2022  for more infomation.

About the performers:

Máighréad Medbh is a poet and performer, with nine published books. Her focus is on the rhythms of experience – attempting them in poetry in flesh. Poetic Essay is the focus of her PhD thesis, her current experiment. Recent books: Imbolg (in change) (2020); Parvit of Agelast: a Verse Fantasy (in cage) (2016).

Samuel Vriezen is an Amsterdam-based composer, poet and pianist. He has written many text compositions (or polyphonic poems) and his writing, including poetry, translations and essays, has been published in many literary journals including the Dutch Parmentier, the Flemish yang and the French Action Poétique.

Róisín Power Hackett is a visual artist, writer, and curator. She makes texts using cut-up writing that she incorporates into performances. Her poetry and essays have been published in various journals. She is currently the co-editor of SEED Journal. roisinphackett.wordpress.com

Anna Belkovska (1992) – playwright, poet, prose writer. Studied at the Culture Academy of Latvia. Published since 2016 in printed press and various online magazines. In 2022, Belkovska’s debut collection of poems Veranda was published and rewarded as the best debut by the The Annual Latvian Literature Award.

Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator. His work seeks the liberation of improvisation from composition, the poetic syntax of philosophical enquiry, and the function of music as translative epistemology. A curious predisposition and a steadfast refusal to accept the existence of boundaries between the real and the imaginary is to blame for this.

SJ Fowler is a poet, writer and avant-garde artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival. He has produced a diverse body of work across poetry, performance, experimental theatre, visual poetry, concrete poetry and sound poetry, short stories and non-fiction. He is the poetry editor at 3:AM Magazine.

Ella de Burca works through performance, sculpture and poetry to focus on how humans construct meaning, particularly from a female perspective. She is especially interested in how we perform as ‘viewer,’ and the discourse surrounding active versus passive experiences.

Michael O’Mahony is a writer and artist living in London. He has performed at the European Poetry Festival, Poem BRUT, and the Bucharest International Poetry Festival.

Christodoulos Makris is a poet and writer with a practice rooted in contemporary experimental, cross-disciplinary, hybrid, documentary and collaborative poetics. He has published several books, pamphlets, artists’ books, digital projects and other poetry objects. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal and Gorse Editions.

Serena Braida is a writer, poet and performer. She is the author of a poetry pamphlet, Blue Sheila (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Selected publications include Hotel, A Glimpse Of and Orlando and the anthologies Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press) and Quello che hai amato (UTET). She has performed from her work extensively, both in the UK and internationally.