What is Masculinity? Why does it matter? And other BIG questions
A highly topical look at the subject of masculinity, encouraging readers to think for themselves about the issues involved. Edited and curated by Darren Chetty and Jeffrey Boakye. Masculinity is being discussed more than ever before, in a range of contexts. People talk about 'toxic masculinity', claim that there is a crisis in masculinity or argue that we need to 'reclaim masculinity'. There have always been many ways of being a man, and many people who have claimed that there are correct and incorrect ways of being a man. This important and timely book looks at the big questions surrounding definitions of masculinity, and discusses where ideas of masculinity have come from and the effects of gender stereotyping. Published by Hachette Childrens group, launched June 2019.
A beautiful book that celebrates how words can take us out of the selves we inhabit and show us the world as others see it. Fiction writers and poets will make us look out through other pairs of eyes; essayists will probe the mental blocks that can make it hard to see the realities beyond the media bubbles. The contributors will do nothing they don’t already do – make the homely strange and the exotic familiar – but they’ll do it with an unflinching eye on today’s social inequalities and the thirst for political change. Others has been successfully crowdfunded with Unbound and ALL net profits of this book are going to anti-hate and refugee charities. It is a spectacular line up that includes Damian Barr, Noam Chomsky, Rishi Dastidar, Salena Godden, Colin Grant, Matt Haig, AL Kennedy, Kamila Shamsie and many other-others, edited by writer and psychologist, Charles Fernyhough, launched July 2019.
People's Banquet: Women's Peace Council, Parliament Square, June 3rd
May flies and May flies.
It has been an extraordinary month. So much change in the air. I feel it fizzing and buzzing and rumbling and being passed around the internet like a bag of burning dog shit and yet somehow quite magically and remarkably we are all still here and still hopeful and still pushing and pulling and we just keep on keeping on and keeping on. Theresa
May has finally resigned. We all will remember her for the go home vans, for failing
us, for failing Windrush, Brexit, Grenfell, Yarl's Wood, for opening the door to bigotry, for shaking
hands with the flat earthers of the DUP and for holding hands with
Trump, for the rise in division and hate crime, for the drowned
refugees, for hurting people with benefit cuts, the vile rape clause, for
the women of NI she left with no autonomy. There is so much to
add to this list, her history of voting against LGBTQ, voting against
equality and demolishing our human rights. Her legacy IS her voting
history. There is no May in June. But now which priv will
replace her? And here we go again, the circus of distraction, brace
yourselves REBELS! Time is now! Meanwhile, I have been touring and spreading the word and having so many adventures and late nights, so much dancing and starlight and moonshine. Spring has been all rum and laughter and gin and gigs and poets and books and trains. I just want to take a moment to share few photos and say a special thank you to Dan Sumption, the poetry roadie extrordinaire; Thank you to Neu Reekie and to Bill Drummond and the Belfast crew; Thank you to Joelle and Karim and Outspoken and the Nottingham friends; Thank you to WOW Festival and all our Liverpool family; Thank you to John Higgs and everyone down at the Brighton Fringe; Thank you to Mike Garry and John Cooper Clarke and everyone at our sold out show at The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill - it was great to return to my old college town again. And last but not least a big thank you to Drift Records and Rough Trade Books and the Heavenly crew and Claire Callender and Ru Callender and everybody down at Sea Change Festival this May bank holiday weekend in Totnes. So excellent! What a riot! Coming up for my birthday, all of my June gigs and parties are here in London, so if you are in town please do come say hello and help me raise a glass and celebrate twenty-five summers since my first ever gig, and yet another mighty year of poetry rock and roll! Yaaaasssss! I have been doing poetry longer than I have not. Scroll down this page for tickets and dates for the hottest shows in the capital in June.
backstage with John Cooper Clarke and Mike Garry at De La Warr
drinking rum with poetry roadie extraordinaire Dan Sumption
Seachange with Rough Trade Books pamphleteers David Keenan and Martha Sprackland
On the evening of June 3 - as Trump enjoys the pomp and ceremony of the state banquet - there will be an inaugural gathering of the Women's Peace Council on Parliament Square. This will be a sisterhood and solidarity action. There will be music and speeches and poetry plus other activities, it will be a very friendly community feel. And just before dusk there will be a mass moment for peace - a solidarity action of people standing together. Show Trump his division and bigotry are not welcome, come to the People's Banquet, Parliament Square, June 3rd!
Also on June 3rd after the peace picnic, after reading a poem at the People's Banquet, I will zoom across town to perform a set at WORD with my Nymph and Thugs label mate Toria Garbutt and Rough Trade Books label mate Emma Warren and the Violette Records gang at The Social. There are suspended tickets available for this one, I think this is a brilliant idea, so it means if you cannot afford a ticket you can claim one this way ... come to this, it will be a extra special night!
And later in June, June 22, midsummers, following on from our shows at LSO St Lukes and The Albany theatre, I'm looking forward to working on a new version of HUH with the extraordinary LSO composer Jasmin Kent Rodgman. I'm also dead excited to be returning to The Roundhouse for the Last Word Festival. Just LOOK at that line up! I will perform my collaboration with Jasmin, 'The Letter'with the orchestra, plus we have a few surprises up our sleeves too...
This very special performance of HUH at Last Word Festival at the Roundhouse, will feature super star performances from the glorious Errollyn Wallen’s haunting song In Our Lifetime, inspired by Nelson Mandela’s prison release. Fabulous Sophia Thakur and Kieron Rennie with spoken word as you’ve never heard, or seen, before. New collaborations featuring the mesmerisingAyanna Witter-Johnson and Solomon O.B bringing together rap, classical music and electronica. It is gonna be off the hook!
Jasmin has started a kickstarter to support a brand new Young HUH Creatives programme.
BIG thank you to everyone who has backed this kickstarter so far, we've already raised 1/4 of the target in just the first week. Keep it coming and help Jasmin to create a new programme supporting the next generation of artists in expressing and exploring issues of race, cultural identity and mental wellbeing. Kickstarter >>>http://kck.st/2VOfJ6j
Roll up! Roll Up!
Last week I launched my first column with Byline Times
This Is Not A Drill will be printed in a carbon-neutral paper mill that plants two trees for every one it uses. The contributors include Caroline Lucas of the Green Party and author and activist Jamie Kelsey Fry and many more...
Extinction Rebellion - "LOVE is on the rise" Salena Godden reading poetry in Parliament Square, photo by photo by Philip Webb Gregg
LOVE IS ON THE RISE:In this photograph I'm improvising with a poem. As I start reading my poetry I'm interrupted by a heckler on a loudspeaker. People in the crowds begin to rise to drown him out, they all boo and hiss at the heckler. I thought he was funny, I asked the crowds to applaud him, to me he was like a pantomime baddie. Then eventually the heckler was taken away. It was a funny moment and I am glad someone took this photo to remind me. I'm posting these photos and poems this morning with solidarity and love to everyone who took part in the peaceful Extinction Rebellion, the hopeful and the joyful, a gathering of soulful and passionate people. Throughout history there’s been doers and doubters, people who sneer at the doers for trying to improve the world. Imagine cleaner oceans, cleaner air. Imagine the talks and actions these protests have already inspired, the changes that will come, changes we will ALL benefit from and pass on to future generations. Imagine if the governments listen. Imagine if we all learn and grow and change. If you dare to dream and imagine any small part of this, if you dare to imagine you can help to make a better world fit for the next generation then you are already part of the rebellion and a better tomorrow.
All the inspiring talks and debates about saving the planet made me yearn to breathe sea air, find some bluebells and woods and camp under the full moon and stars, I spent easter weekend exploring Norfolk's north beaches under the April's full Pink Moon and I remembered it’s a beautiful world, I love life and this wild living world, I remembered how we are all connected and wild and a part of each other.
I have been thinking about our survival and fire and water and ice and flood and destruction and conservation and forests and cathedrals and stained glass windows and Greta Thunberg and my sister Jo and autism and all the spectrums we live in and the beauty and the chaos of this powerful time of protest and the immigrants that built our cathedrals and temples, and the cathedrals and temples in other countries bombed for gold and oil and war, and the cathedrals under the oceans and deep in the rain forests and thinking about it all, and I do mean all of this at once, my head explodes, it is a mosaic of colour as spring sunshine and hope pours in and out and in and out and washes through me and onto this page. What a time to rebel and what a time to live your one life true and alive and lively ... Keep fighting the good fight!
“Consider the age of that gold Buddha,
it is older than the crippled tree
that was planted when it was erected,
but younger than the river beneath it
and the ocean oldest of all ...”
This poem has been whispering in my ear lately, it is published in 'Pessimism is for Lightweights' and I rarely read it and share it at gigs. Although it was written a few years ago now, it resonates with my feelings for both Extinction Rebellion and that fire of Notre Dame
I read this poem last weekend in Madrid in most beautiful DESPERATE LITERATURE!!
🍷🇪🇸✨BIGLove to Desperate Literature and our Madrid poetry family!
June 28 - LONDON - What is Masculinity? Book launch
July 18-22 - CORNWALL - Churchtown
August 2-4 - CHEPSTOW - Green Gathering
August 23-25 - SUSSEX - Byline Festival
August 31 - HASTINGS - Hastings Lit Fest
September 13-15 - WALES - Good Life Festival
September 28 - WORTHING - with John Cooper Clarke
October 19 - NANTWICH - Words and Music Festival
This week I'm in Belfast with Neu Reekie, Bill Drummond and friends!! I'm just doing this handful of festivals over the coming summer months because I'm working on new projects and new books. I'm keeping a lid on it for now but I'm well excited about the new work in the pipeline. I just want to say I've been on a roller coaster lately and I want to send BIGLove and thank you to all who’ve supported me and been to see me and bought tickets to gigs and thank you to all readers of my work so far. Thank you to everyone who has bought a book and come and said hello and given me a hug. Thanks for the support from festivals, from bookshops and BBC radio too. Thank you to all courageous poetry rebels, new mates and old comrades and everyone I’ve been drinking and gigging and giggling with! More soon! Thank YOU! sgxx
"From this moment despair ends and tactics begin. Despair is the infantile disorder of the revolutionaries of everyday life." Quote from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life, 1967 - Extinction Rebellion - New work by Banksy
Lisa Luxx and Salena Godden reading poems at Parliament Square, Extinction Rebellion, April 2019
