A special event offering a unique approach to poetry in performance: 5 poets/artists based in Ireland and 4 visiting poets/artists from the rest of Europe pair up to produce brand new, specially commissioned collaborative works to premiere on the night.

Representing a legacy of poet Christodoulos Makris’ spell as Writer in Residence at Maynooth University and Kildare County Council Arts & Library Service, this is his third programming partnership with European Poetry Festival to be presented at Riverbank Arts Centre.

The European Poetry Festival is a predominantly UK-based festival celebrating the resurgence of avant-garde and literary poetry across Europe in the 21st century, while exploring and expanding the possibilities of the live poetry experience. The festival’s primary focus is on innovative poetry in collaboration and engagement between poets from across the continent.

Curated by Christodoulos Makris and European Poetry Festival director, SJ Fowler.

This event is made possible through generous funding from Kildare County Council Arts Service, and it is additionally sponsored by selected European state agencies.

Performances by:

Nick Roth & SJ Fowler
Lianne O’Hara & Henriks Eliass Zēgners
Natasha Cuddington & Katerina Koulouri
Tom Roseingrave & Patrick Cosgrove
Christodoulos Makris & X, formerly known as Twitter

Biographies:

Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator. Many of his compositions explore the symbiotic resonance of language as sound and symbol. He is artistic director of the Yurodny Ensemble, and a partner at Diatribe Records, Ireland’s leading independent record label for new music. He has served as artist-in-residence at the European Space Agency, California Academy of Sciences, dlr LexIcon, Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

SJ Fowler is a writer, poet and performer. His work explores an expansive idea of poetry and literature – the textual, visual, asemic, concrete, sonic, collaborative, performative, improvised, curatorial – through 50 publications, 400 performances in over 40 countries, 4 large scale event programs, numerous commissions, collaborations and more. He is the director of European Poetry Festival.

Lianne O’Hara is a poet and playwright. Her writing is published in Winter Papers, The Rialto, The London Magazine, Abridged, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, and elsewhere. Her poetry is included in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive and features in the ‘Ink & Imagination’ exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland. She is currently working on a series of new poems commissioned by Grangegorman Histories, documenting the experiences of patients and staff at the former psychiatric hospital.

Henriks Eliass Zēgners is a poet, editor, and curator from Latvia. He has two collections of poems published – Elementi (“The Elements,” 2013) and Paradīze (“Paradise,” 2022). His poetry has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Welsh, and Kazakh, and published in The London Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books, Interpret Magazine, and elsewhere.

Natasha Cuddington was born in Saskatchewan. In 2017, she was announced as the recipient of the Irish Chair of Poetry Bursary. Her début collection, Each of us (our chronic alphabets) was published by Arlen House in 2018. An assistant editor at Cyphers, she co-edited, with Ruth Carr, Her Other Language: Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse (Arlen House, 2020).

Katerina Koulouri is a London-based translator and poet, translating to and from Greek. She recently translated David Harsent’s ‘Open Letter to Europe’ (Versopolis, 2023). Her début chapbook, Invitation to Elsewhere, was published in 2023 and was part of her collaborative performance with poet and artist Alban Low.

Tom Roseingrave (he/they) is a Dubliner. His writing has been published in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Fallow, Architecture Ireland, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. He is Associate Artist with experimental music group Kirkos Ensemble, and has performed with Kirkos, and individually, at New Music Dublin, Temple Bar Gallery, Unit 44, RIAM, and elsewhere. He is founding editor of Frustrated Writers’ Group.

Patrick Cosgrove is a London based artist. His work utilizes the body, collage, text, sound/voice, digital, moving image, paper, paint, felt tip, biro, found objects etc. His work often begins with something ready-to-hand or discarded and develops from there.

Christodoulos Makris is “one of Ireland’s foremost avant-garde poets” (The Irish Times). He has published five books of poetry, as well as several limited edition pamphlets, artists’ books, digital projects and other poetry objects. He has received numerous commissions and awards from institutions including Irish Museum of Modern Art, StAnza Festival (Scotland), Maynooth University, The Arts Council of Ireland, University College Dublin and Irish Arts Center (New York) among others. He is the curator of Is this a poem?, a mixed media exhibition and event programme currently running at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI).

X, formerly known as Twitter, is a social media website based in the United States. With over 500 million users, it is one of the world’s largest social networks.