INSIGHTS Masterclass with Christodoulos Makris
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Poet Christodoulos Makris hosts an online writing masterclass, our sullen art: the poet after AI, for poets at all stages of their careers on Thursday, 16th October.
INSIGHTS | our sullen art: the poet after AI | Masterclass with Christodoulos Makris
Thursday 16 October 2025, 6.30pm - 8.30pm | Online Workshop (via Zoom)
About the Masterclass
How does the poet adapt to the advent of generative artificial intelligence, which is capable of instantly producing a 'publishable' or even 'award-winning' poem? Human thought and feeling may be extrapolated into linguistic expression increasingly convincingly, so what does the poet retain access to that the machine can't reach?
Perhaps we can learn something from how the visual arts developed following the advent of photography. Do poems become things that escape their established limits and expectations? Does the physical presence of the poet gain significance? Does process trump product? Is a hierarchical understanding of the artform sustainable? Do we continue operating within the confines of poetry as defined by tradition, while employing new technologies to explore non-linearity, hybridity, polyphony, arbitrariness? What is our 'personal language model' and how do we train it to make a poem?
Participants will be encouraged to reflect on these and related questions through exercises privileging the hyper-present as the space where poetry happens. All that's required is basic interest in contemporary poetry, accompanied by attention to and trust in poetic intuition, and a receptive approach to working with language as material.
Limited spaces, booking essential.
About Christodoulos Makris
Christodoulos Makris is "one of Ireland's foremost avant-garde poets" (The Irish Times). He is the author of five books of poetry - most recently Contemporaneous Brand Strategy Document (London: Veer Books, 2023) and It Reeks of Radio (Dublin: BLR Editions, UCD/MoLI, 2023) - as well as several limited edition pamphlets, artists’ books, digital projects and other poetry objects, including the interactive digital poetry publication sorry that you were not moved (Dublin: Fallow Media, 2022) in collaboration with Kimberly Campanello. His work has appeared in Granta, The Stinging Fly, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere, and his awards include Writer in Residence at Maynooth University; a Project Commission from Irish Museum of Modern Art; Digital Poet in Residence at StAnza International Poetry Festival, Scotland; a Creativity (Poetry) Commission from University College Dublin; an Artist Residency at Irish Arts Center, New York; and a Poetry Commission from Cúirt International Literature Festival, Galway, among others. His many editorial and curatorial credits include the groundbreaking mixed media exhibition and programme of events ‘Is this a poem?’ which ran from February to September 2024 at Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI).
INSIGHTS is Poetry Ireland’s masterclass series, led by some of the most respected voices in contemporary poetry in Ireland, and designed to support poets at all stages of their careers.