WRITING – body, place, inner speech, thirst, coincidences and openness – MARIA MATINMIKKO

Writing as wandering reverie and moments of crystallization. In this course we invite writing to emerge through observation, note-taking and associative techniques. Open to everyone, the course draws inspiration from a variety of writing exercises and styles, asking what writing could be for oneself and seeking to find a dialogue between the text and the writer.

Writing is approached as an everyday yet enchanting gift, as a tool for thinking, and as its own wild territory. The course does not require any previous experience in purposeful writing.

"My porous sense of smell divides into tiny streams, in whose rhythm I ally myself with both the wind and the lightness of a ping-pong ball. Running opens the pulse, but walking very slowly opens things. The season of the moon has settled as a resonance at the back of the head, a terrible play / an intoxicating heat like knowing something before thought."
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(Maria Matinmikko: SIIS NIIN, suuri ihmetys)

Maria Matinmikko (b. 1983, Oulu, Finland) is an award-winning poet and prose writer. Her first three books — Valkoinen (2012), Musta (2013) and Värit (2017) — form a literary constellation. Kolkka (2019) is a phantasmatic, philosophical and feminist verse novel.

Valohämy – taide, maisema ja maailmanloppu (2023) combines writing with photographs taken by Matinmikko and drawings by visual artist Sami Jalonen. An experimental audiobook version of the work was also released, for which sound artist J. Koho composed an electroacoustic soundscape.

SIIS NIIN, suuri ihmetys was published in May 2025. It is a valley of poem-essays that also includes Matinmikko’s photographs and Jalonen’s paintings.

Matinmikko is part of the writing collectives behind the novel Ihmiskokeita (2016) by the Society of Possible Literature (Mahdollisen Kirjallisuuden Seura) and the digital work Lähes tunnistamaton mahdollisuus menettää I and II (2018, 2025). Her writing moves across the boundaries of genres, combining poetic, philosophical and social thinking in different ways.

She holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Helsinki, where she studied aesthetics as her major subject.

Photo: Tomi Kontio