I am
poet
artist
fragile being
iron will
ancient child
survivor
Hello and welcome,
Story-weaving, writing, performance, and art isn’t what I do; it’s who I am and how I navigate the world. I started this blog because I believe words are for sharing. Reading other poets’ and writers’ work inspires me, as does exploring the diverse art and ideas available on sites from all around the globe. These are the threads I’m working into the tapestry.
Sometimes I feel we are made of dust, love, words, and ways of seeing. The words we choose, and the way we choose to envision ourselves and our surroundings help shape the world. I am someone that battles complex disabilities and chronic conditions. Whether navigating fantasy or reality, or that space in-between, words take us where legs may never go and help us see things from a distance that maybe we could not see up close. Words are my compass and my freedom, in spite of their own rules and restrictions.
I have also worked in politics, peace-building, double-glazing sales (briefly, thank goodness), interfaith and creative facilitation. There’s a full artist’s profile below but my poems, art, warblings, and wonderings will tell you more. I hope you find something that resonates, inspires or sparks questions.
Full Artist’s Profile:
Antonia Zenkevitch is a story-weaver, artist, born ranter, and poet with a wealth of past experience in performance, theatre, dance, and creative facilitation. Over the years she has used these skills for entertainment, education, peace, and capacity-building projects in the East Midlands, Middle East, Europe, and South Africa. She has made the changing challenges and limitations of her disabilities and chronic conditions into motivation to find and master new forms and aesthetics. For her, living is curating the process and patterns of life. She passionately believes every person is creative in unique ways and everyone has a right to self-expression.
Organisations she’s worked creatively with have included Creative Partnerships, Compass, Nottingham, Activate UK, Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, Nickelodeon JR & Purple Monster Theatre, Birmingham. Indigo Brave Theatre Company, Nottingham, North Derbyshire Tertiary College, Nottinghamshire Next Stage and The Renewal Trust, Nottingham, Leicestershire Literature Festival, Leicester, Environmental Arts Theatre Company, Edinburgh, Gowanbank Sustainable Village, West Lothian, Kunst-Perle-Fläming and Ecotopia, Weissenberg and EcoME, Jericho -Almog junction.
Past projects have ranged from helping young consultants, aged 7-13, to co-create multi-arts cultural experience days for an extended school community at Samworth Enterprise Academy, Leicester, to participating in international artists’ symposiums. Once this involved coordinating the closing event of Ecotopia International Festival which included 500 people from 125 countries. She has worked in special needs, in conflict resolution and with interfaith groups, often using and adapting similar inventive tools to aid communication. She has participated in and chaired women’s groups and been involved with politics.
More recently she has explored digital art and re-focused on her writing, participating in Poems on Prescription and writing an article on access and inclusion for Left Lion. She has also had work published in Proliterate and her writing has been included in The National Justice Museum’s (UK) award nominated collection ‘Letters of Restraint’ and an event entiled ‘What is Testimony’ at the (UK) National Holocaust Memorial Centre. She has also enjoyed being resident story-weaver on a virtual Cottage in the Woods series of courses from late autumn 2020 until early springtime 2021. Writing on several blogs, Nott Normal is also her creative baby.
Other recent work can be found at:
- The 48 Percent Life – poems based around the state of the nation(s)
- Nott Normal – nobody is normal! This is a Nottingham-based accessible arts project with a sense of humour.
- The Library of Lost Wands – epic fantasy steampunk fanfiction
For information on my working ethic please see the Policy and Philosophy page.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch 