Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary Meary James Tambimuttu of Editions Poetry London, publisher of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few. It was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (which she represents France), The Opiate and Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art. She is the recipient of the 2018 Generosity Award, bestowed by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through Spoken Word Paris, where she is a writer-in-residence.
On the Way to Invisible
The Looking Glass
In this resplendent collection of selected poems, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko invites avid and casual poetry readers alike into her abstract world. One that is painted in vivid hues too bright and brilliant for an otherwise beige realm. Exploring themes of love, lust and, inevitably, death, Klimenko takes us on a cathartic journey, forcing us to see things in a prismatic light we might never have noticed without her. Accordingly, Klimenko pushes us into the corridors of our own mind, as much as into the ones that are inside hers.
In Antonia Alexandra Klimenko’s second collection of poetry, The Looking Glass, the always daring poetess continues to speak truths both personal and universal. For it is so often in sharing one’s specific experience that they find their words resonate with the general experience of others. Whether she’s discussing traumas of her past (e.g., “Where Does the Sky Begin?”) or the simultaneous wonders and pratfalls of falling in love (or even just lust), Klimenko dives into her emotions wholeheartedly throughout this collection. And, in turn, leaves her reader just as affected and awestruck as she did with her debut, On the Way to Invisible.
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