Against Originality with Christodoulos Makris

Course Summary

This course facilitates the creation of new work through perceptive, innovative and critically acute engagement with already existing material.

The contemporary writer is operating in an environment offering a superabundance of readily accessible sources and ever-increasing shareable text and audiovisual content. As a result, the nature of literary composition is increasingly relying on understanding the implications of this ‘crisis’ of authorship, and ever more explicitly on our reading, selection, and manipulation skills.

Course Outline

This is a practical course incorporating regular writing tasks underpinned by carefully selected and targeted supporting material, as well as group discussion and exchange. Development of work-in-progress will be facilitated. Sections include: writing with ephemeral texts, appropriative interventions (eg sampling, cutups, erasure, reframing), documentary techniques, translation within and across languages or media, non-textual content, automatic transcription and algorithmic text generation, writing with constraints, collaboration, aspects of presentation and publishing.

Course Outcomes

The course is designed to deepen participants’ understanding of approaches and techniques towards repurposing pre-existing material, to provoke experimentation and innovation, and to grant permissions through example and dialogue, thus aiding the development of a truly contemporary writing practice. Ideas and concepts explored have an application in all genres, and they reflect the basics of literary composition which relies on connecting linguistic elements (“all writing is in fact cutups” – William Burroughs). A broader engagement with the politics and poetics of language use and communication is embedded in the course. Editorial and publishing feedback will be provided on request.

Christodoulos Makris is “one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics” (The RTE Poetry Programme). He has published several books, pamphlets, artists’ books, digital projects and other poetry objects, most recently this is no longer entertainment (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019) and sorry that you were not moved in collaboration with Kimberly Campanello (Fallow Media, 2022). Recent residencies, commissions and awards include Writer in Residence at Maynooth University, an Arts Council Literature Project Award, and the inaugural Joseph M Hassett Creativity Bursary (Poetry) at UCD. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal, and co-director of the multidisciplinary performance series Phonica.