It’s the first days of spring, pink blossom and yellow sunshine. Gigging Monster roars and wakes ferocious, looking for a fight with Writing Monster who is quietly working inside a book.
Gigging Monster leaps about the house singing, ‘Spring is here! Spring is here! Stop writing! You wrote loads all winter, it’s my turn, it is my time to dance in the spring sunshine! You better have written something half-decent, because it is me that has to do all the leg work and stand on stage and tour it all summer!’
Writing Monster bursts into tears, upset with all the noise. She runs upstairs and throws herself on the bed and weeps about her need for solitude. She pours on the guilt about unfinished stories, she wails, ‘but I like writing, writing is a happy place . . .’ Writing Monster is so needy. She demands all of my time and patience. So much re-living and gazing into the long dark night.
Gigging Monster has been locked in a box and sleeping all winter, as Writing Monster wrote books. Gigging Monster is fierce, fixing cocktails, jangling ice cubes and declaring
‘Oh, how I need to see poets again, I need fun and I need laughter!’
She tells me she has ordered a new suit from the tailors. She wants me to wear this new red lipstick with it. But first she orders me to bathe and wash and comb my hair. Writing Monster likes me in my pyjamas, knotty hair, living on tea and toast.
Gigging Monster likes shiny things, festivals and fires and howling at the moon. Gigging Monster likes travelling and parties and all the buzz of people and late-night chats. Gigging Monster makes her demands, she tells me it is time to get back on tour, she begs for the bright lights of Soho and mischief.
Writing Monster clings to my slippers and weeps, ‘Please don’t leave me in here . . .’ as she shows me a new novel we want to finish.
And here I am stuck in the middle. It is like this every year during the first days of spring. As soon as the light changes, I am thrown about in this battle, a clash of ego and mania, pull and push, dark and light, winter to summer, the conflict of inside and outside, introvert and extravert.
There is no rest with my monsters.
Yet it is with wonder that we watch winter end and spring return, my monsters and I, we gather the first miraculous daffodils of the year, every year, we arrange them in a vase placed in the centre of the kitchen table, as though they are the first flowers we have ever seen.
These monsters, these brain bullies, I made them, I feed them, I hold them, I need them, I hate them, I love them, and as the decades pass I am trying to learn to balance them equally.
Photo from my garden, the first signs of spring this blooming magnolia. This audio ‘Monsters In Spring’ is taken from audiobook With Love, Grief and Fury read by author Salena Godden and available now and wherever you like to listen to audiobooks…
link: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/With-Love-Grief-and-Fury-Audiobook
Hello my dears, how are you?
It has been a while since I did a long post.
Apologies if you missed me. I have been away teaching at brilliant writers retreats in Arvon in Devon with the brilliant Nikita Gill and Joelle Taylor. Then I was up and away with the fairies for a few weeks in Neverland on the remote island of Eilean Shona leading workshops and working on my new novel there. Maybe I will do a separate post about some of these epic adventures later. Right now I’m meant to be on a break from socials, I am buried in edits, swimming in writing, deadlines imminent on new books. Even coming on Substack to share this poem today, it feels a bit naughty, but I wanted to share it and I hope you enjoy it. I haven’t done a big gig since December and must admit I am starting to get itchy feet to perform again. I’m sharing this poem ‘Monsters In Spring’ as it is the same annual battle in my head and exactly how I feel today seeing the bright blue skies and the sunshine and the magnolia blossom and realising it is now suddenly … April.
In winter when you are writing and engrossed in creativity, you will see posts from friends and miss your favourite people and gigs and parties, but then when it is summer and you are touring and partying and festival’ing you miss the quiet writing time and isolation. The grass is always greener … Most writers are made this way, fundamentally awkward and introvert but have learnt performance and have practised extrovert behaviours to share their work, there is no other way to do it, but learn to hide in your room to commit to the write and then learn to leave your room, share your poems and books, and show up for yourself and your work.
I do have some wicked solo shows, events and festivals coming up that I look forward to and also more teaching at beautiful residential writers retreats booked in for spring/summer 2025. I hope you will come and join me. If you want to find tickets, info is on the usual linktree below and this new buythebook page run by my publishers Canongate: https://buythebook.online/salena-godden
I’ll leave you with this image, today my friends sent me this from home, someone has written this on a wall on Hastings seafront, here’s some quality poetry graffiti, even if I say so myself:
PESSIMISM IS FOR LIGHTWEIGHTS HOPE IS A GROUP PROJECT
It makes me feel rather homesick. I love to see my poetry shared like this. I love Hastings. Thank you for following and thank you for subscribing … more soon …
BIGlove Xxsg
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
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