Hello lovelies,
Thank you for finding me here!
I am Salena Godden. I’m a writer and broadcaster of Jamaican-Irish mixed heritage. I write poetry, novels, memoir, essays, short fiction. I make music and radio shows. Thank you for finding me on Substack. This page is named after my latest poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury - the poems explore a deep and fearless love for people and planet, grief for all we lost and are losing, space for mourning, and our fire, rage and fury.
With Love, Grief and Fury was published in May 2024 alongside my literary childhood memoir Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited, both are published with Canongate. My second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe — the new novel is titled The Life Of Life — and is due for publication with Canongate in the summer of 2026.
On this Substack I mostly share poetry, news and dreams, notes from my 4am Writing Club, tour diaries and gig adventures, snippets of performances, archives of audio, films and short fiction and glimpses of new work in progress.
Thank you for subscribing and following this page. Thank you for sharing and caring. I have switched on paid subscriptions for those that wrote to me to say they wanted to financially support my writing. Never any pressure, I leave all of this to your discretion, every penny gratefully received.
All I know is suddenly it is 2025, it is down to you and me, we live in the future,
With Love, Grief and Fury,
Xxsg
Bio 2025:
Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning novelist, poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage.
Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death was published by Canongate in 2021, it won the Indie Book Awards for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.
A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 pieces of courage and resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in 2023. The title poem is on permanent display at The Peoples History Museum in Manchester.
A new full poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury and literary childhood memoir Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited were published with Canongate in May 2024.
Most recently her poem While Justice Waits was highly commended by the Forward Prize and a live performance from With Love, Grief and Fury was recorded at the Southbank and broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s The Verb and Pick of The Week.
The paperback of With Love, Grief and Fury will be published in October 2025 and a cover reveal and pre-order links for this will be announced soon. The highly-anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe, The Life Of Life will be published by Canongate next summer, 2026.
Latest commissioned work includes a short story titled Rapier which is published by Callaloo Literary Journal in the US in May 2025, and another short story, I am Hagstone which will publish in Bog People - A Working Class Anthology Of Folk Horror in October 2025 with Vintage Publishing.
Godden has also written the foreword for an exciting community-spirited anthology celebrating 200 years of Hastings poets titled Poet Town. The books will be published by Moth Light Press and launched with live events and a photography exhibition at Hastings Book Festival in September 2025.
Salena Godden is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex.
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