Monday 30 March 2015

Book Club Boutique: London Book Fair After Party


On April 16th 2015: The Book Club Boutique invite you to a vibrant showcase of phenomenal literary talent, the latest new books, new authors and new voices. All served with the finest cocktails in the lush surrounds of the elegant Vout O Reenees private members club in East London. If you are visiting the city for the London Book Fair  and if you're a book lover, please do come and join this party, for the best of the Book Club Boutique's Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie

This April we're thrilled to be curating live readings from two fresh and exciting, eagerly anticipated new novels, both published this London Book fair week: Paul McVeigh's 'The Good Son' and Xavier Leret's 'The Romeo and Juliet Killers'

We'll also hear new poetry from prize winning poets Lewis Buxton, the reigning champion Young Poet Laureate of London Aisling Fahey and the fabulous Dzifa Benson. Plus new work from notorious Book Club Boutique hosts Salena Godden and Michelle Madsen

There will be a live music from Delirium Tremens, treating us to delicious songs from their latest folk noir release. Plus we'll be drinking and dancing through the night to top tunes from The Book Club Boutique DJ Kevin Richards, and all for just £5 on the door, 7pm 'til late. Click here to join our facebook page for more updates or find us on twitter @bookcboutique 




Other events also coming up this spring...







Monday 23 March 2015

"Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear." Words Not Wars and other good news...







I am going to start this week by writing about how much I love your children. All of your teenagers. Every single one of your brilliant and beautiful kids. Today I even love the screaming toddlers that were tearing around my pub throughout the rugby and my Saturday afternoon pints. The kids are alright. Stop the press, hold the front page, there are some amazing things happening in the playground and for the first time in a long time I have hope.

Last week I worked alongside brilliant author Adam Marek mentoring the First Story competition winners at Arvon, Totleigh Barton. There we were, under cream tea skies, in the middle of the Devonshire countryside, work-shopping poems and stories, with hazy sunshine and the birds singing for the first days of spring. It was a fantastic landscape, the vernal equinox, and to top it all there was a lunar eclipse too. But these teenagers were no ordinary teenagers, these were First Story students, these were a hybrid super group of super talented young people producing the most outstanding poetry and prose all week. They were so inventive and imaginative, funny and kind, this was a truly remarkable week, filled with a lot of laughing and inspirational moments. 



His piece was chosen by a panel of esteemed judges out of over 3,000 entries received from across the country, and was published in The Sunday Times, please click here to read it.  




Eerie misty eclipse at Totleigh Barton

Today I feel as though I have peeked into a world of creative and colourful butterflies, a future that is bright and fresh and diverse, and about to spill out and all over the old black and white television world view. You’d better get ready. There is no black and white vision in the future, there is a huge blue sky, a million shapes and colours, without  boxes and limitations. 

The guest speaker for this Arvon week was award-winning author Tim Bowler who was utterly inspirational. Tim read beautifully and he spoke about the journey of writing, I recall him telling us that nothing is wasted, that without the failure and the mistakes we wouldn’t get to the good stuff. His try, try, try again approach rang so true. He also talked about the students being at a most exciting time of their lives, their creativity and productivity and I couldn’t agree more.

I wonder why we aren’t listening to teenagers more. Perhaps we should consider lowering the age of voting. Why not? We already pressure teens to think about their futures, to decide what to study and do for the rest of their lives at that age, why not give them a vote to decide who rules this country too, give them the power to vote against the powers who are cutting all their benefits and nicking their funding. After all it is the kids that we will leave behind to clean up all this mess. Unless we all go green, stop fracking, stop playing war, stop blatantly killing and polluting everything, we simply won’t have any planet left to vote on. There aren’t many politicians I believe in much anymore, do you? I have always used my vote but I’m currently find it hard to tell the difference between real life politics, mud slinging and media hype, and an episode of House of Cards. 
We should just admit it, we are rubbish at this, lets just bring in the young people. And as I write that I picture The Houses Of Parliament inhabited and ruled by a diverse group of teenagers nurturing a future that really is actually better for everyone. Imagine that. A future without boxes, without labels, without being ruled by corruption and old beefs from the 20th century, the end of the old school old boys club, a government selected without privilege and peerage. A fair system based on saving the environment, sowing the seeds of peace and making a better and safer world for future generations. Ah! There I go again, being all idealistic and getting carried away again, that’s what happens when you spend an idyllic week writing poems and watching young imaginations growing. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

When I returned to London I went to Camden’s Barfly to do a gig to support the brilliant WORDS NOT WARS event - This campaign has been started by 13 year old Bluebelle Wednesday Carroll. WORDS NOT WARS has been created because as Bluebelle said yesterday - WORDS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE  - the charity is all about setting up pen pal pairings with school children here in the UK writing letters with children in refugee camps. I think this is the best thing on the internet.

It was a great matinee of music and poetry performed by teachers and fantastic school students. The wonderful Ed Harcourt played live. The poet and journalist Jamie Kelsey Frye spoke eloquently about the cause and the need for hope, that with hope we have everything. I read an excerpt from SpringfieldRoad, choosing a chapter which was evocative of memories of the first days of spring in childhood. And then the whole event ended with the WORDS NOT WARS song, an anthem written and played by Bluebelle, her brother Cassidy and the WORDS NOT WARS choir pictured below. Not a dry eye in the house.   Please help the WORD NOT WARS campaign and support the crowd fund here. 


www.wordsnotwars.co.uk


Thank you to everyone at Arvon and First Story and Bluebelle and the WORDS NOT WARS crew that made this past week so magical and so full of light and hope. I am so excited to have met you all. Since Friday I have been inside this story: What if that wasn't an eclipse, but just a giant changing the lens on the camera they use to observe us and our minuscule bacteria life. What if that eclipse was just a slow motion image of a giant’s thumb obscuring the sun as he changed the lens of the camera they use to watch us as we multiply to extinction on this doomed Petri dish bacteria planet. What if the sun is a camera? OK. Ok Ok. Well if that’s true then with these extraordinary young people on this bacteria planet, the one thing we all have to share is a germ of hope, spread the germs, spread the good news, hope springs eternal. 











latest radio links:

Resonance FM: radio interview /  Little Atoms podcast here

















Thursday 12 March 2015

blog / Springtime on Springfield



 
There was something extraordinary about last Saturday. There was something spiritual and ritualistic about taking the book back to the street where it was written, the street that it was written about. Taking Springfield Road to Springfield Road in spring time. I guess it was a gig and a party, it was a ceremony, it also felt a bit like visiting a place of birth, all of this and more, all at the same time, together we were returning to the scene of the crime, it was a christening, a reunion, an exorcism, a crowd gathered and we drank and we laughed, and some cried, we squared a circle, marked the spot, like pirates and a treasure map. The book and the content, the blood and the ink, the black and the white, the dark and the light, the compass and the clock, the page turning and the time passing, the salt water against the rocks and sand, the salt water in our eyes, the drum and the heart beat, the history and the future, the past and the present, my ghosts and all the ghosts, all our collected memories with the making of new memories, old and new, all dancing about the room at once and with so much love, sea air and old moonlight. It was huge and it felt momentous to me. Thank you to everyone that came. I’d especially like to thank Paul Burgess and Louise Colbourne for letting us use their beautiful space, the halls of the Nat West Bank, number one Springfield Road. It was so kind and generous of them to let a rabble of poets in to play in the old bank house. Thank you! And also thank you to Harry K for DJ’ing. These photos taken at the Bankhouse by Paul Burgess:





Throughout the evening we heard from an exceptional line up of London and Hastings writers and poets – heart filled thanks to Colin Grant, Gareth Rees, Amy Acre, Oli Spleen, Robert Denard, Dave Pepper and my brilliant cohort and co-host Michelle Madsen  - all reading poems and sharing memories of childhood and the psychogeography of the here and there and the past and present, to an eclectic and mixed crowd of family and friends, young and old. People I went to school with, ace faces and top buddies from my college years, Julian Humphries, Olivia Wells, Amanda Pegman, Jacky Ellis and Emily Booth, stunning to see you's... Such nostalgic revelry was shared, and there I was, reading on Springfield Road from Springfield Road, recalling the taste of Thunderbirds, the Hastings Pier disco, break-dancing, bubble-gum lip gloss and Rocky’s amusement arcade. There was a massive show of hands for people that were born opposite, at the Buchanan Hospital, over the road. I signed quite a few books and was delighted to meet many of the new and current residents of my road, Springfield Road. 



There was a lot of love in the room. Oli Spleen was so nice I had to heckle and shout: I’m not dead! Because his speech was too lovely, lovely as the things you hope someone will say at your funeral, which you are not supposed to get to hear, of course. And once the talk was all done and the music over, the evening continued at various pubs and around kitchen tables late into the night, with much booze and laughter and catching up and well … I didn’t get to bed until dawn. But, waking up in time for Sunday lunch, I can recall a Sunday afternoon that was a delicious blur of Hastings debauchery and wine. I love proper pubs. I love Hastings Old Town. I love lost afternoons. Fantastic old friends, live blues music, seagulls and cider and the familiarity of home … Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. Sploosh!




Back in London's Kings Cross, Monday night’s Speaky Spokey at Kings Place was elegantly hosted by Colin Grant. It was a fantastic evening of poetry and memoir: Writing The Immigrant Story and I was honoured and excited to be on this line-up with two star favourites - Colin Grant was narrating a dramatised version of his memoir Bageye At The Wheel with actors, Burt Caeser, Harley Silvester, Mikil Pane. And Gabriel Gbadamosi presented his beautiful memoir Vauxhall. In my head and heart, Bageye At The Wheel and Vauxhall and Springfield Road are siblings. I have felt a great connection with Colin Grant and Gabriel Gbadamosi and their memoirs of childhood, of 1970’s Britain, their tales of racial tension, the rise of Thatcher, living below the breadline and seeking identity. I was so delighted and proud to see us side-by-side on stage together. If you haven’t read their books I highly recommend both of them. It was a beautiful night and Pete Fij provided a stunning soundtrack, he talked about being immigrant Polish, which was a perfect accompaniment to the readings and the panel discussion. And DJ Harry K was phenomenal as ever on the decks. These photos below by Ben and from my phone...



 
Yesterday I was on Resonance FM as a guest on the highly popular book show LittleAtoms hosted by Neil Denny. I was talking about Springfield Road and I also read an excerpt I have not read before on air too. You will find the podcast here. Neil Denny is a fantastic interviewer. We talked about a memoir being a living and breathing muscle, that our story is changing as we change, as we grow and learn, so does our remembering and writing of the past. And as I write all of this, I can feel a shift, it is the seasonal shift of the beginning of spring and something other and incredible too. 



Last Saturday I remember standing on the corner of Springfield Road holding a box of Springfield Road books to take inside. I stopped and looked up at the stars, a certain constellation I recall well, a pattern I remember from gazing up at night from my attic bedroom window. I could feel the ground beneath my feet was all Hastings and home, a place I identify with as home. My peripheral vision a familiar clutter of shop lights, the church spire, the curve of the hill. The sound of seagulls crying above, beer cans being popped open, anticipation, gorgeous music and laughter  –  all of this, every second, meant so much to me. As a girl all I wanted to do was fill my time with stories, music, writing poems and to fill my head with books and adventures. There is no way I could have imagined how big this feeling, this gratitude, this magic, this strength and this love. Thank you

Keep fighting the good fight, lovesgxx















latest press // Springfield Road reviews:

Indie Berlin Review:  "The tale is rich with reflections on memory and tradition, presence and absence, relatives and the past... I don’t know why, but I sometimes felt like I was prying on Salena, but it’s a book, a published book, and I was offered it." Polly Trope



Opus Independents Review: "One aspect of the book that I feel worked really well was the juxtaposition of chapters written from adult Salena’s perspective, bringing the reader out of the past and into the modern day, and hearing her thoughts on the process of writing the very pages we have been reading. The beauty of her writing makes it easy to forget that we are not reading a novel, but someone’s true life story..." Amy Crofts