I invite you to invite me

I have spent much of my life learning how to remain visible without leaving my deeper inner chambers.

When I come to a gathering, I do not leave those chambers behind. I bring the world they exist in with me.

My first priority is attunement. Through silence, laughter, the shruti, the drum, our voices, the intelligence of our bodies, we begin to form the invisible bonds of relationality. We expand awareness with connection intact.

Not simply a shared space, but shared care. Care for the room, for what is moving through it, for one another, and for me too.

We sink into the depths of the body. The pulse, cramp, goosebump and burp. The pleasure of a good breath and the ecstasy of hearing yourself through a decent sigh. Through magic made ordinary. Through blood vessel and wind.

From there, we may sing. We may enter a story, make offerings, lie down and be carried through an oracle journey. Or follow the movement of a ritual through growth, breaking, decay and emergence.

I am not trying to return anyone to a polished version of childhood, nor to make a monument of what was hurt. But I will stay and hear the footsteps of the ground they’ve walked.

I am listening for the muse in her innocence, her purity, her wickedness, her snarl and her growl.

The part of us that knows how to make the narrow world vast again.

Thirty years

A body of work

I began creating and leading workshops when I was young; my first job was teaching storytelling and drama to children, bringing people into closer contact with their mythic bodies, imaginations and creative lives.

Over more than thirty years, the work has moved through theatre, performance, writing, music, ceremony, guided journey and the long creation of the mythic world of DragonBacks.

I no longer experience these as separate strands.

Some landscapes are written into books. Some are sung into rooms. Some are entered through ritual, rite of passage, conversation and the shared intelligence of a gathered body.

Each is another way of building the bridge between our inner chambers and the visible world, making it wide enough for others to cross with us.

What we might make together

The forms it may take

Musical invocation

I work with voice, original song, spoken word and live instrumentation to call a gathering into shared presence.

An invocation is more than a performance. It marks a crossing. It gives voice to why we have gathered and lets us feel the moment ordinary time begins to change. We slide into the timeless, placeless memory of ceremony, which reminds us who we are and why we came here.

Olivka seated on the floor of a church hall with her guitar, a room of people moving and resting around her.

Olivka singing into a microphone beneath a stained glass window.

“With her melodic song she enchanted the audience, but she pierced through me. Her improvised words unravelled echoes of my deepest truth, revealing what is intrinsic within me.”

Miriam · Spain

Ritual and ceremony

I create rituals that give shape to the passages we are already moving through.

An opening. A closing. A loss. A return. A threshold. A fire around which something may be offered, witnessed, mourned, celebrated or brought into form.

Girls beginning their bleed, women ending theirs, marked with fire, song, witness and presence. Men leaving a marriage, an elder losing her beloved. A pause in the shared field to honour the full breadth of being human.

A part of the living structure.

Giving the invisible a body to feel through and to be seen in.

The joglo prepared for the ceremony, a long red cloth running down the centre, strewn with rose petals and lined with candles.

Red roses, candles and an offering plate on the ceremonial cloth.

Pink lilies and candlelight along the length of the cloth.

The joglo set for ceremony, red cushions laid on the tiled floor around an altar and a guitar.

A red velvet altar by candlelight, set with roses, anthuriums, lilies and bowls of fruit.

“Thank you, Olivka, for your gift. For the beauty, the wisdom, and the healing presence that your music brings to this world. You are not just an artist; you are a portal to something greater.”

Rosie · Netherlands

Embodied mythic journeys

Through story, voice, rhythm, and live sound, I guide people into inner journeys they can feel in the body.

I build the landscape for you to enter. I carry the world inside me. I guard the door as you sink in.

Images arrive. Instinct begins to move. Something beyond the reach of ordinary thought becomes tangible, and the body recognises what the mind may not yet know how to name.

A round bamboo hall at night, a circle of people lying down with their eyes closed while Olivka and a second musician play.

“Her talent is unbelievably vast, rich and nuanced. She has a profound way with words and an ability to transport people through truly transformational experiences.”

Cath Slater · Australia

“The only way to understand the power of this process is to trust and experience for yourself. The words I’ve used here do not come close to the power of experience I had with Olivka.”

Gary · U.S.

Olivka singing into a microphone on a sofa by candlelight, her guitar across her lap.

Talks, readings and live conversation

I speak and read from DragonBacks and from the creative, ritual and relational life from which the books were dreamt and birthed.

I am tuned in to discover what becomes alive between us when the words leave the page and enter the room.

There is room for wisdom, intimacy, depth, humour, strangeness and the unexpected.

Workshops

My workshops bring people into direct experience through voice, embodiment, imagination, creativity, ritual and collective enquiry.

I am interested in what is already particular within each person. Their private mythology. Their language. The fragments of ancestry, longing and imagination moving beneath what has been spoken.

Together, we make enough space for these things to become visible without dragging them out of their mystery.

Olivka sitting cross-legged in a carved wooden alcove, smiling, holding an inlaid guitar.

Invitations

I am available for selected festivals, retreats, literary events and gatherings

You might invite me for:

A musical invocation
An opening or closing ceremony
An embodied mythic journey, storytelling and live music
A ritual or creative workshop
An author talk or live reading
An immersive encounter with the world of DragonBacks
A conversation or interview, podcast included
Rites of passage

If something in you feels a flicker of recognition, excitement, resonance, life or longing, I love invitations from interesting and curious folks.

Tell me about your gathering, your organisation, your idea; let’s make a brew and talk.

Begin a conversation

Or write to [email protected]

Languages spoken: English and Polish