Waiting for Godden: Anthologies: POET TOWN & BOG PEOPLE

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