Poet Town Portrait of Salena Goddess by Maxine Silver, May 2025

Sharing a peek at the new portraits for the Hastings Poet Town project taken by Maxine Silver - thank you! We chose the Fire Hills for this shoot. This is home to me, the smell of blooming yellow gorse, so glorious and coconutty, the greens, blues and turquoise of the sea and the sky, all the salt in the air and all those delicious colours and feelings. I love it up here.

Hastings is a seaside resort with an illustrious poetic history. Once a haven for Pre-Raphaelite poets and Victorian authors, it is still a hub of creativity today. It continues to be home to artists, musicians, and renowned contemporary writers. Edited by Richard Newham-Sullivan and with a foreword by Salena Godden 'Poet Town: Poets & Poetry of Hastings & Thereabouts' is an anthology that brings together the best classic, modern and spoken word poets, linked to this uniquely creative coastal town.

Poet Town received a phenomenal quote and endorsement from the mighty Joelle Taylor - thank you Joelle. The wheels are truly in motion now, and this fantastic Hastings poetry anthology, celebrating 200 years of poetry from Hastings and thereabouts will be launched summer 2025. There will be an exhibition of the Maxine Silver portraits and launch party events at Hastings Book Festival and many more lovely things in the pipeline. Please watch all the poets pages for news and updates on all of this. This is what community looks like to me, the poets gathering...

Follow #PoetTown on your socials... more soon!

Poet Town Patreon

patreon.com/PoetTown

Poet Town in Hastings Independent

hastingsindependentpress.co.uk

Poet Town Portrait of Salena Goddess by Maxine Silver, May 2025

Talking about fantastic new work, anthologies and exciting collections of note, this month we also saw the cover reveal for this beautiful new book:

‘BOG PEOPLE - A Working Class Anthology of Folk Horror’ edited by Hollie Starling. I'm so excited to read this book. I'm also looking forward to sharing new work, my new eerie short story ‘I am Hagstone’ is haunting these pages, and she will be tapping at your bookshop windows in October 2025, just in time for Halloween.

Unleash the dark and delirious with this electrifying anthology of folk horror from some of Britain's most iconic working-class voices: A.K. Blakemore, Daniel Draper, Emma Glass, Mark Colbourne, Mark Stafford, Hollie Starling, Jenn Ashworth, Natasha Carthew, Salena Godden and Tom Benn.

A phonograph cylinder that plays on a loop for eternity, casting out ghostly spectres of violence; a centuries-old stew made of dismembered body parts; a bigoted woman working at an ossuary, the bones she watches over her only remaining friends; three siblings who set out to scatter their fathers’ ashes, a man none of them could stand; and a hagstone sat in the pocket of a witch.

Uncanny and unsettling, wild and wyrd, the ten stories in this collection showcase the best of folk horror. Set in and around England, they celebrate working-class culture and history, and, sharp as a guillotine blade, reveal the real monsters that stalk our green and pleasant land.

Pre-order BOG PEOPLE from Bookshop.Org

a handful of delicious dates

summer 2025

June 13: LONDON

FRQNCY LDN

with Alex Lavery, Nikita Gill, Arun Gosh & more

St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington

June 14: SUFFOLK

An Evening with Salena Godden

St Mary's, Walpole, Suffolk

June 19: HASTINGS

Poet Town X Refugee Buddy Project

poetry charity fundraiser at The Print Works

July 8: SLIGO

Ciarde Sligo Arts Festival, Ireland

July 11: CORK

West Cork Literary Festival, Ireland

Out now: With Love, Grief and Fury

Out now: Springfield Road

Out now: Pessimism is for Lightweights

Out now: Mrs Death Misses Death

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/salenagodden

Buythebook: https://buythebook.online/salena-godden

Residential Writers Retreats

June 30 - July 5: MONIACK MHOR

Moniack Mhor Writers Retreat, Scotland

with Salena Godden and Louisa Young

Special guest speaker Michel Faber

August 18 - 24: CHATEAU DE SACY

Residential Poetry & Yoga Retreat

Chateau de Sacy, France

December 1 - 6: ARVON

Residential Writing Course, Arvon at The Hurst

Exploring Feminine Creativity with Nikita Gill

Special guest speaker Joelle Taylor

thanks for finding my page

please donate & share if you can

Refugee Community Kitchen

Choose Love

Save The Children

Action for Humanity

UNICEF

MAP

tickets: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/poettown/1729348

Salena Godden

Biog Summer 2025

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning novelist, poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death was published by Canongate in 2021 - it won the Indie Book Awards for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.

A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 pieces of courage and resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in 2023. The title poem is on permanent display at The Peoples History Museum in Manchester.

A new full poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury and literary childhood memoir Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited were published together with Canongate in May 2024.

Her poem While Justice Waits was highly commended by the Forward Prize 2024 and a live performance from With Love, Grief and Fury was recorded live at Out-Spoken at The Southbank Centre and broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s The Verb and Pick of The Week. The gorgeous paperback edition of With Love, Grief and Fury will be published in October 2025, a cover reveal and pre-order links for this will be announced very soon.

Work in progress: The highly-anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe, The Life Of Life will be published by Canongate next summer, 2026. Latest commissioned work: a dark fiction titled Rapier will be published by the Callaloo Literary Journal in the US in spring 2025. An eerie short story I am Hagstone will be published by Vintage in Bog People - A Working Class Anthology Of Folk Horror in October 2025.

Salena Godden has contributed poetry and written a foreword for an exciting community-spirited anthology titled Poet Town - The Poets and Poetry of Hastings & Thereabouts edited by St Leonards-born poet Richard Newham-Sullivan and celebrating over 200 years of Hastings poets. This richly varied poetry collection and photography book will be published by Moth Light Press and launched with live events and a photography exhibition at Hastings Book Festival in September 2025.

Salena Godden is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex.

For ALL book enquiries and bookings and info please contact publishers Canongate or Film, TV and Literary agent Crystal Mahey-Morgan at OWN IT!