a handy round up and spring clean
'Springfield Road' reviews...
Naomi Frisby: The Writes Of A Woman
"What’s most compelling about Springfield Road is the warmth and love Godden infuses it with."
Iain Finlayson: The Times
"Her writing is urgent and detailed, colourful and clamorous. Like all love stories, her memoir is intense and intimate."
Debjani Hawkes: The Literateur
“Throughout, Godden writes about a past that is at once deeply personal yet also belongs to the everyman figure; her descriptions of childhood are simultaneously timeless and yet rooted in a particular period of British history…”
Amy Crofts: Opus Independents / Now Then Magazine
"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 and hearing her struggles about getting it down on paper somehow mange to round the whole thing out, and give it a satisfying dimension."
Polly Trope: Indie Berlin
“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.”
Sophie Parkin: 3am Magazine
"Springfield Road wasn’t really about Hastings, it’s not just about a place or time, it’s about feeling. It’s about tracing a lost love and finding out about a man she never knew; her father and growing up with a very slim replacement in the North of England. It could be a misery memoir, with the easy racism of the 70’s, the brutality of adults and the thoughtlessness of children, but the innocent joy that is picked out because of the way Salena sees the world makes the prose full of poetry and beautifully turned phrases. Salena can write you into a child’s heart and out of the mouth of a teenager’s inquisitive nature."
Lee Bullman: Loud and Quiet Magazine
"Springfield Road’s prose wavers effortlessly throughout, from tender poignancy to raw, gritty realism and this lovely book serves to remind us that however much the world has changed in the last forty years, in many ways it is still exactly the same."
press and publishing...
Interview with Alan Bett in The Skinny
Interview with author Paul McVeigh
Interview with author Vanessa Gebbie
Excerpt 'First Kiss' published in Ape Magazine
Poetry: 'Billie' published in The Pool
Erotic Short Story 'Dirty Pigeons' published by The Pigeonhole
radio highlights...
In conversation with Neil Denny / Little Atoms
All Things Considered with Arun Rath / NPR
Culture Studio with Janice Forsyth / BBC Scotland
Loose Ends with Clive Anderson and Arthur Smith / BBC Radio 4
Poetry: 'Here's a poem about space' / BBC World Service
More archives, BBC radio, interviews: www.mixcloud.com/salenagodden
gigs, parties and festivals
April 23: The Pool launch party, London
April 26: Changing Britain, The Southbank
April 28: Inside, L'escargot Soho, London
May 2: Blah's Big Weekend, The Bristol Old Vic
May 7: Chill Pill, The Albany, London
May 9: Writing On The Wall Festival, Liverpool
May 13: For Books Sake, Erotica Book Launch Party, London
May 15: Talking Liberties, The British Library, London
May 15: Late at the library: Tongue Fu with Saul Williams, British Library
May 26: How The Light Gets In, Hay-On-Wye
May 30: Poetry Reincarnation, The Roundhouse, London
June 2: Word, Y Theatre, Leicester
June 5-7: Stoke Newington Literary Fest
June 18: London Short Story Festival
June 19-21: Salon, Also Festival, Warwickshire
July 11: Unbound Books, Cornbury Festival, Oxford
July 18-19: Lovebox, London
July 22: Jawdance, Apples and Snakes, Rich Mix, London
July 31: Ways With Weirds, Port Eliot Festival
August 14-16: Green Gathering, Wales
August 21: Edinburgh International Book Festival
September 4-6: Festival No.6, Portmerion, Wales
October: US tour, road trip, bluegrass festivals, book fairs...
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| UNDER THE PIER PUBLISHED BY NASTY LITTLE PRESS |
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| FISHING IN THE AFTERMATH PUBLISHED BY BURNING EYE |
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| SPRINGFIELD ROAD PUBLISHED BY UNBOUND BOOKS |
*this blog was created whilst listening to the late great Janis Joplin
