Waiting for Godden: March 2021

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

Photoshoot with The Guardian, portraits by Tristram Kenton, March 2021

Salena Godden, pictured at home in London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Salena Godden, interview by Katy Guest in The Guardian

✨📸

Today I feel like sharing some of these pics from The Guardian interview and photo shoot from earlier this month, portraits taken by Tristram Kenton. I hesitated to share some of these because I’m laughing, and because I feel self conscious, but decided laughing is good and so here we are: hello, this is my face.

Mrs Death Misses Death has been out for two months now and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook with Canongate. Spring is going to be super busy for me. I will be sharing my new book at some amazing online book festivals, wonderful talks and panel events, sharing conversations with amazing authors I love and admire like Jenni Fagan and Monique Roffey plus popping up on lots of radio and podcasts too. As we get into summer some of these lovely things may even be in person! No way! Yes way! Imagine that! Face to face! The response to this book so far has blown my tiny mind. I have been particularly moved by readers images of the last page and how readers have felt a connection in that ritual. It means the world to me. Thank you for supporting this debut release and for following this journey so far, keep on keeping on... sgxx

Mrs Death Misses Death

April 2021

April 4th - The Great American Folk Show

Hosted by legendary singer songwriter Tom Brosseau

Streamed live on Prairie Public, Fargo, Dakota, USA

Coming soon: Shakespeare and Co. Paris

With Jenni Fagan, author of Luckenbooth

Become a friend of Shakespeare and Co. here

April 22nd - 2.30pm - Afternoon Tea

With Royal Society Of Literature and Society of Authors

all details to be announced soon...

April 24th - 12.30pm - Cambridge Lit Fest

With Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch

Coming soon: Rough Trade Q & A

A brand new podcast series from Rough Trade

Gemma Cairney X Salena Godden

Tune in here

Click here to order at Waterstones

Audiobook available now at Audible

Tickets and info: https://linktr.ee/salenagodden

Thursday, 18 March 2021

Excerpt from The Guardian interview by Katy Guest

Salena Godden, pictured at home in London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

The taboo-busting poet has written her first novel, Mrs Death Misses Death. She talks about missing performing and why Brits struggle to speak about her novel’s all too timely subject

Mon 15 Mar 2021 12.52 GMT

he day after our interview, Salena Godden emails me first thing. She’s dreamily watching the snow, she says, and eating a huge Jamaican banana cake with rum in it, but she’s also kicking herself for forgetting to say something important. “I woke up thinking I’d hate the idea that I was in the Guardian and didn’t namecheck these good people,” she writes, above a list of books she’s excited about, by authors including Courttia Newland, Nikita Gill, Kathryn Williams and Irenosen Okojie. It’s typical that, just as she’s publishing her first novel, she wants to share the love with fellow authors. Godden has mentored writers for many years (including Nikesh Shukla, whose book Brown Baby was published a week after hers) and, having worked so hard for her share of the limelight, she really cares about paying it forward.

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden review – the poet's debut novel

The first novel in question is Mrs Death Misses Death – a witty, angry, warm and elemental combination of poetry and prose in which Death is portrayed as an old black woman who shares her stories through a young poet called Wolf. It was published just as the UK’s Covid death toll reached 100,000 and, with apparently perfect timing, the book bears witness to avoidable deaths, unnoticed deaths and lives thoughtlessly stolen. But it was written long before lockdown, with its genesis as early as 2011. “I started this book because I was in a place of anxiety and grieving and mourning and there was a run of funerals,” says Godden, noting that a lot of people are in that place, now. The first time she “met” Mrs Death was in 2015: walking in east London she suddenly heard a voice announce, “I know a lot of dead people, now.” She walked miles, through Whitechapel and Bow, feeling the rhythm of Mrs Death’s words and typing them frantically into her phone.

The novel that emerged is an exhilarating combination of allegory, poetry and very real fury. A recurring motif is a tower block fire that killed Wolf’s mother. There’s a poem titled Mrs Death in Holloway Prison, with a dedication that reads: “Say Her Name: For Sarah Reed, Black Lives Matter.” Even Mrs Death is tired of all the senseless dying. This, though, is essentially an uplifting read. “It’s very much a book about life,” Godden says, “and about love and about time, and the way we spend our time, and telling people you love them before it’s too late.” It could hardly be more timely.

Mrs Death Misses Death has been optioned by Idris Elba’s production company and she’s excited about it having another life on screen with a powerful, black, female lead. She dreams of Viola Davis or Sophie Okonedo as Mrs Death, maybe with a breakthrough role for some new, young actor as Wolf....