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"To each invalid his household god, to the tubercular the god of suffocation."

-Kafka, Diaries 1.2.1922

...to the poet the god of knuckles.

A voice echoes from the cave. The mind struggles for sense. A hand grips the pen. We record content and are consumed as memory becomes fragments and these wandering shards populate, scar and inform experience. What, amidst these frantic and pained cries for attention, can a legacy of words relate? Out of subjective sorrow, degradation, dejection, out of the margins--holes appear, against the blank white of the page. A place to pass through. A joint, a disruption, an articulation--a rivening fist.

"God of Knuckles" is an essay/lecture pulled from the pages of Natalie Mariko's titular work in progress, undertaken during her residency at Garage Gallery this year. The text elaborates a theory of poetics as subjective (dis)solution and (re)integration, affective transience and musical memory tool, the syncopations and discordancies of which go beyond merely relaying linguistic information and become instead a means of grasping onto (what, in literary terms, is called) 'the voice'. Participants will gain a hopefully not insignificant understanding of themes such as: poetic theory; poetry and violence; De Quincey's 'involutes' and time as affect; ways of reading and interpreting; vocal technique and authenticity; transience and vocal impact; and recording.

About the author:

Natalie Mariko is a poet from New Jersey, residing in Athens. Her collection, HATE POEMS, was published by the Australian publishers, no more poetry, in 2023. She is managing editor of CODE Magazine, a junior contributing writer for CLOT Magazine and a former poetry editor for SAND Journal. She studied English and African Literature and Film at the University of Cape Town. Her works have appeared widely, both online and in print.