Wednesday, 22 January 2025

Happy Birthday Mrs Death & Poem 'Blackbird'




Hello my lovelies, 


I feel like this might be one of my last posts on WAITING FOR GODDEN. 


In case it is thank you so much for sharing and following and reading these blog posts over the last 15 or so years.


You will be able to find me writing on Substack 


Maybe the Waiting for the Godden is over. Maybe it is time to just let go of this blog and some of my other social media pages that I hardly use anymore - I am not using Facebook or Twitter. I haven't been blogging and posting on here as often as I used to, especially since I started using Substack to share poems and write things ... maybe these pages aren't meant to be forever, we forget passwords, we move to another page or site where our friends and favourite poets and artists are sharing work. We all leave trails of poems and songs and stories and pictures, and this becomes forgotten, like that old tumblr or myspace, just left abandoned like a burnt-out car in the woods with beautiful ivy growing all over it.  Just in case I don't post here for a while I'll leave you with this new poetry-film I made this week, something loving and gentle and snowy, it has been such a disaster, such a tough month and rough start to the year, sharing this with love and solidarity.








BLACKBIRD 














Thank you to everyone that has read and connected and shared my work on here over the years. Thank you for Waiting for Godden, maybe the wait is finally over... Most especially thanks for sharing my debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death


This last week in January is Mrs Death's Birthday, my MDMD book birthday week. The hardback and audiobook were published in lockdown in January 2021 and the beautiful blue paperback arrived the following  year on this day in January 2022. 


This week I received my PLR statement and it informs me that thousands of strangers have taken time to borrow my books from their local libraries. I am immensely moved by this and grateful. I had no idea. Thank you. 


Here’s a picture of a happy day, this day in January in 2022, when the paperback was in the big window of the flagship store of Foyles on Charing Cross Road. This was a huge moment for me, I recall, I was very excited about it. I have never been in a big shop window before, and this is a particular favourite bookshop I love to visit all the time, especially as a baby poet when I worked and partied in Soho every night. 


I always said ‘one day I will be in that window’ and back then this seemed like a big dream of a thing to say out loud. It was something I really fought for and believed though. I look back and love the punky baby poet who starved and fought for me.


I have to salute her. She, who is not me now. I think about that, how we have to thank our past self. The person who writes the first draft of the book may grow to feel differently about things than the person who signs the published article. The poet that started this WAITING FOR GODDEN blog all those years ago isn't me now. We are all complex, multi-layered and messy human beings, and all of the eras of you being a human being get you to this place, which is always in the here and now.


I am inside these thoughts and memories and also in the here and now, January 2025, I’m in hibernation and buried in the darkness of January tasks, it is a sad mixture of death and taxes, virus and sickness, bereavement and deadlines, sorrow and bewilderment. 


This winter I'm quietly working in the worlds of Life and Death and Time, my new MDMD universe novel The Life Of Life will be published next year in 2026. I am excited to share this new story in the future times, written by me in the past which is now. Art is time travel. Hope is energy. Passing some of this good vibe to you who read this post, please feel it, keep going, keep going, keep going, we need you, you need you, future you will look back and thank you for your courage and perseverance.  


Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep reading and writing, keep making and doing, keep stirring the pot, keep speaking your truth, young you, old you, the in-between you, the here and now you, they all say it with me, keep going, keep going, keep going, we need you.


With many thanks to all book lovers, book bloggers, book sellers, fellow poets and writers, thanks to my publishers and my agent and family and friends.


With love, grief and fury, 

sgxx








Poetry. Books. Gigs.

Out now: With Love, Grief and Fury


Out now: Springfield Road 


Out now: Pessimism is for Lightweights 


Out now: Mrs Death Misses Death


Linktree: https://linktr.ee/salenagodden


Substack: https://salenagodden.substack.com
















Friday, 23 August 2024

Poem: Dog Days Done & Autumn 2024 dates



 



Dog Days Done



Summer lifts her skirt

revealing a glimmer of


amber, light and yellow.

Summer takes her time


to pack her belongings,

her weary butterflies


and thirsty bees.

And somewhere


in a distant field

August writes


goodbye letters

in gold on hay


and corn and

chestnut and you.


The morning after

the first thunderstorm


you’ll open the window

and smell it changed,


wafts of smoke,

and rain and past.


This ending

is a beginning.


Make hay

and make love,


gather bilberries

and blackberries.


Dog days done,

Sirius is south,


the last burst of roses,

apples and cider,


the Lughnasadh feast,

the tomato harvest,


the fruits so red and ripe

in September’s hands,


summer feeding

autumn’s mouth.




(c) Salena Godden / 2024 

'Dog Days Done' is published in 'With Love, Grief and Fury' by Canongate Books



Thank you so much to everyone that I have seen out and about this summer, thank you all the fun and conversation, to everyone I shared cider and sunrise and dancing with in the joyful Green Gathering and at the brilliant Edinburgh International Book Festival this month. Thank you to all of you both onstage and back stage and behind the scenes making these amazing gatherings happen. I carry that warmth all year around.

Below is a work in progress photo: Loving my sunny August desk. Here I am for the time being - a mug of tea and juicy ripening tomatoes. Working in the new book again. My Gigging Monster is back in her box, festivals and gigs done for a few weeks, and Writing Monster is back in charge of things. As a rule I feel like I am a winter writer. It is very unusual for me to isolate myself and write in the summer. However I love exploring this story world and wish to make it as good and full of summer light and hope as I can and need to beat the deadline for this new novel. The working title is ‘The Life Of Life’ I cannot tell you anything, but that it is set in the ‘Mrs Death Misses Death’ universe and will be published by Canongate in the year 2026. Wonderful to be reunited with my characters Life and Death and Time again.  

Here’s a new story, a new perspective, a fresh eye, a brave leap and a deep breath. It feels like coming home to be inside this dream of the world again...

Thank you so much for reading, listening, supporting my writing adventures. Keep on keeping on, change is here, change is now, keep on keeping on and on…


See you here, see you there, 

Xxsg






Autumn 2024