Behold, the creative path of err, yours truly. It’s mostly about poetry.

I was born on 03.03.1983 to two people in their early 40s, both creative-turned-something-elses. My father used to make jewelry and dolls, write poetry and he still can design his own furniture for our home use, but he somehow ended up being a hydroengineer. My mother used to write poetry, was interested in architecture and acting, but eventually forced to study applied chemistry. People still chuckle about how funny the date itself is. A couple of people told my parents that I have a great chance of being creative, due to my star sign being Pisces.

From 1984 to 1987, I was mostly drawing and learning to speak and write in an amount unusal for a child, picking up some Italian and German language along the way as well.

In 1988. I was sitting at the table in the living room, looking at my now-deceased trees of heaven, Časlav and Miroslav, and I suddenly decided to write something about the beauty of the sound of water and the beauty of water in general. The p**m itself will be posted somewhere on this website in near future. However, my family wasn’t sure if this was an on-and-off-thing. This was also the year I started learning English, from a TV show.

In December 1989, four months in school, I wrote my second p**m, inspired by what I was seeing on TV – Romanian revolution and the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu. The central character of the p**m was a youngish man, set to leave to help his country, and his child sister crying. This same event made my grandmother ill, as she was born in Timişoara and a series of celebral crises eventually lead to her death in June 1993. The same month, I wrote an incredibly-morbid story called Mali Aca iz Babuna. It’s hard to explain WTF was it about, but it did feature a mother carrying two dead bodies of her sons accross the country (supposedly the whole of former Yugoslavia) for three years until she burried them.

This got the ball rolling and, despite my horrible handwriting, I continued writing p**ms and even combining them in notebooks on the covers of which I’d write the title of my “poetry book”.

On the course of the next couple of years, I even begged a publisher who was, curiously enough, one building away from us, called “Delta Press” to publish some of my work. I was seven years old at this point. Given that they were only publishing notebook covers and sticker books, I get it that they were a bit confused with a small child approaching them and asking for an actual book publishing contract.

In 1992, I wrote my first novel, about a rozella parrot called Budimezon, whose mother was captured by moonshiners wanting to breed parrots they’d sell in Europe. After trying to survive on their own, thanks to Alilimina’s friend Otopato and Budimezon himself, the gang makes a boat and cruises around the coasts of Australia to save Alilimina. After his voyage, Budimezon unites rozellas, budgerigars, cockatiels (upon fighting their dictator, Doterang who ends up in jail) and cockatoos and ends up becoming a very young president of a newly formed union of parrots. I planned a second novel, where Budimezon marries a girl called Karlina, and his son Askamezon and an orphan called Tisheron, lead their own adventures. This year, I also won a critic’s choice award for my creative hand-made letters sent to a children’s show, Hitić and its mascot, a puppet called Srećko. The viewer’s choice award went to a single not-so-creative letter by someone else.

In 1993, I won my first “Zmajeva nagrada” (Dragon Award), a prestigious award given to children with writing talent, named after Jovan Jovanović “Zmaj”, an outstanding Serbian poet and doctor. The same year I started writing two other novels – a horror one about four dogs in Nea Anchialos, Greece, accidentally waking up a Byzantine monster at an archaeological site location and another one about three sister witches living in another dimension.

In 1994, I applied to study in the animated film workshop A2, led by one of the most successful Serbian animated film authors, Vera Vlajić. That was the year I also started writing satyrical p**ms next to typical children’s and nature describing ones.

In 1995, some of my work was featured in the daily newspaper Politika Ekspres, as it was determined to be suitable for “children’s response to the current situation in the country”. I actually do not have the copy of this. This same year, A2 was featured at the international festival of documentaries and animated films here in Belgrade.

In 1996, I won my second “Zmajeva nagrada”, as well as four other awards. The same year, I got some minor publicity regarding Three Sister Witches and I worked as the oldest of the editors of my elementary school’s quarterly magazine, Vuk. Later that year, I formed an imaginary Eurodance band with a friend from A2 and while this was obviously funny, it helped me improve my writing skills in English, as I was the person writing the lyrics to all of our “songs”.

In 1997, due to graduating from elementary school I left Vuk and due to a despute with one of the instructors, I left A2. High school didn’t look promising, especially given that my mother forced me to pick the math/science orientation rather than language/arts/social sciences one.

In 1998, I faced a whole creative explosion, having written and drawn more than ever; largely inspired by the ability to watch Cartoon Network every morning on a local channel and having made piece with my Serbian language and literature professor, who was the person whom I have to thank for my mental stability in the years we’re most fragile.

In 1999,

In 2000, I missed having my work published and the professor at high school in charge of my class was almost happy about it, while my wonderful Serbian language and literature professor was comforting me. Somewhere during the summer holidays between the junior and senior years of high school, I made my first website, it was about Formula one, done in Front Page 2000.

In 2001, I narrowly missed having my work published for the second time, I was rejected by Matica srpska, without a single word. When it turned out one of my university mates, who now runs a nonsense blog that looks like a moodboard and explores some total cliches had her work published, I really wondered how she did it. Today I’m pretty sure that, despite how nonsense her work is in my eyes, it was more mature as she had more life experience.

In 2002, I suffered some sort of a creativity meltdown and have not written anything after June. 2003 remains a big zero in terms of written p**ms in my life. However, I wrote a novel in that period of time. The novel is largely centered around this particular place and I do intend to publish it at some point. During the whole of 2002 and 2003, I also continued making websites, started actually making raster graphics of my own, learning about web standards.

In December 2003, I found an inspiration to write again, coming from a bunch of things I read that I thought were p**ms, by a person whom I knew of, but never knew much about. I vowed to be thankful to this person for as long as we’re both alive. I think they don’t like the idea of that.

2004 and 2005 were pretty much my pocket-sized renaissance.

2006 and 2007 were less creative in terms of writing, but more creative in terms of design.

2008 followed 1998 in the terms of being a very good year for writing.

2009 is a long story. By now you probably see some of this page is unfinished, huh?

All of my work written in 1996 and beyond is archived in huge folders, I have written close to 400 p**ms in the noughties, have yet to count how many I have written in the 90s. I destroyed a grand total of my 1995 writings, as I suddenly determined I was too mature to write children’s poetry. Nowadays, I obviously regret a stupid 13-year-old’s decision, as I could’ve actually published some children’s poetry and read it to my four nieces.

Currently, I am not sure what I want to do. I’m quite interested in doing spoken word performances, as I heard they sound pretty well coming from a contralto most of the time. I am also interested in pulling a George Pringle-like synthesis of word and sound, but my lack of musical knowledge might require someone to help me out and I do have a couple of friends in mind. I’m also trying to approach a couple of publishers with my new work once again, including those who rejected me in 2001. The screwed-up copyright laws in Serbia prevent me from publishing my work as an e-book, as I apparently don’t have any protection if I do so, unless I am a tax-payer (which most freelancers aren’t)?! Still investigating into it.

Special thanks to Zlatica Nikolić, Tatjana Munižaba and Mila Radović for pushing me as much as they could from 1989-2001. Special thanks to the undisclosed person, too.