Nols Nathanksi records underground, in the Crypt Gallery beneath St Pancras Church during HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL in April 2026, while the Euston Road went on with its own noise a few feet above our heads. We took the Holy Week prompts down with us and used them the way you use a spade. Seven days of betrayal, overturned tables, barren blossom trees, a body washed, a body waiting. Two poets who did not flinch at any of it. Byuka Makodru @fortunetailedbeast writes with ash and treats the page as a portal. Pia Fajelagutan writes under the name @ThePissICallArt and treats the page as somewhere to spill. Put them in a room built for the dead and give them a liturgy to argue with, and this is what you get. Not a solemn hour. A loud one, mostly, with a few silences in it that we left in on purpose. In this episode The crypt as instrument. What cold brick does to a line before it leaves your mouthWriting with ash, deep listening, poetry as spellcasting, and whether the word ritual is doing any real workMigration and diaspora, two versions of it, held up against each otherThe alter ego as a permission slip. The Piss I Call Art, and what a name lets you sayHoly Week borrowed as scaffolding by people the church would rather not have in the buildingThe prompt that neither of them wanted to answer, and what happened when they did anywayByuka Makodru (they/them) is a trans, disabled and migrant writer working across speculative fiction, experimental writing and poetry, with a practice that runs through immersive performance, ritual facilitation, visual art and publishing. Their crypt installation was written up by Asiimov Baker: a book with honeycomb pages held together by steel wire and black hair, sheets of parchment threaded through, and beside it something like sheet music distended out of all proportion, clefs and staves in black and red, fine as a hair in places and unbearably loud in others. Their work appears in Ache Magazine issue four, an extended issue of feminist writing on illness, health, bodies and pain. Ache No. 4: achemagazine.co.uk/issue-no-4Epitaph, on the crypt work: asiimovbaker.com/post/epitaph Pia Fajelagutan (she/her) is a poet, author and illustrator based between Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and London, whose work moves through migration, diaspora, philosophy and language. Her debut collection Whiskey For The Uninitiated became an Amazon bestseller and was carried into signings and appearances at the Emirates Literature Festival. She hosts workshops, performs internationally, and co-curates open mics and readings supporting emerging literary communities across the Middle East and the UK, with recent appearances at Hold Space Poetry Festival, Poetry Supper Club, Writers of Riyadh and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Hannah Kate + 2 Interviewed on Hannah's Bookshelf, North Manchester FM: hannahkate.netMake Poetry Weird Again. Poetry to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. @makepoetryweirdagain · makepoetryweirdagain.com
