Who is man or woman behind the slender black tag “Powk” that is scrawled on benches, stop signs, utility boxes and telephone poles around Lansing?
We don’t know. And unless Powk is caught with a spray paint can in hand, or decides to reveal his or her identity, we will probably never know.
But take a walk around northwest Lansing and you’ll see Powk’s mark: At the corner of Oakland Avenue and Cedar Street Powk is on a telephone poll, the back of a stop sign at Kilborn and Walnut streets, a bench at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Willow Street, and in several spots in the vicinity of the Saginaw Highway bridge crossing the Grand River.
Powk’s identity eludes us, but exploring the etymology of the word “powk” may offer an idea about who this graffiti artist is, and how he or she chooses a spot to tag.
In the Oxford English Dictionary, “pouk,” which has a variant spelling of “powk,” means “a sty on the eyelid, or a pustule, which is much like a boil or pimple.”
Is Powk making a political statement about the decay of infrastructure?
Tess Tavormina, a professor of medieval literature at MSU, says “powk” is found most commonly in British regional dialects.
“The spelling ‘powk’ would be an odd choice for that meaning, since both “puck” and “pooka” are relatively well-known words in modern English, at least among people who know folklore or fantasy literature, but it might be possible,” Tavormina said.
According to a Feb. 10 entry on the Web site Urbandictionary.com powk is, “A placeholder word that can describe the end of an action, a surprise, a confirmation, etc.”
If you're reading this, Powk, let us know.
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