One October, a very long time ago, I taped the whole month, I worked and lived and loved, I ate and drank and slept, but all whilst recording everything I was doing:
typing poems on a typewriter,
performing in boozy bars,
drinking in the Colony in Soho,
playing guitar in the dark alone,
flirting on the telephone,
eating dinner with a friend,
taking a train to visit Mum.
Me and my Dictaphone – we did a lot of walking, smoking, thinking, drinking, writing and yet more walking – Hampstead Heath to Kentish Town to Camden to Regents Park to Soho to Southbank to Waterloo, the red light flashing in my top pocket, recording an audio loop, capturing an era. The sounds of my life, my breath, the busy traffic, the people I knew back then, the era and changing times. I still have the cassettes of that October in a box, which I sealed shut.
Now, something about the October light and the way I feel this morning reminds me of that time, and that one October making those particular, peculiar recordings and writing experiments. It was long before social media and smartphones. I guess it was a little like a selfie, but audio and not for sharing. I suppose I was exploring and memorising our world through sound, making a time machine of sorts, a way to hear who and where we were. I made a month of tape recordings:
the clip-clop of my cowboy boot heels,
the crunch of autumn leaves,
running for a bus, the sounds of the bus,
drinking in a bustling and smoky pub,
someone asking,
‘Why are you recording this?’
I remember that strange month, sad month, odd month. I remember listening to these tapes and hearing my boot heels clicking on the pavement, then being surprised by voices, how many kind people called out and spoke to me as I walked around my London: Hello Salena, they said, Alright, mate! Sometimes they called my name like this, Hello Salena, passing someone crossing a busy street, Hello, as you bump into someone in a pub. Hello Godden they’d say on these tapes – not knowing I was observing my life in audio, not knowing my pockets were stuffed full, spare batteries, blank tapes, a notebook and pen.
I was a little scientific and analytic about it. But I was also quite smashed a lot of the time, so I would make mistakes, flip a cassette tape over and record over the same side twice or forget to change the batteries and lose some crucial evidence, events and late hours. It was pot luck what actually got recorded and saved and what was lost forever. I know I was behaving unnaturally, performing, sometimes thinking I was being clever, knowing I was on tape, telling people they were on tape and us all performing to the tape. Telling folk it was a wild experiment. And people would change the way they spoke to me. Or react as though I was a journalist interviewing them. All the time I wondered: How much of life is a performance? What is real? Authentic? True? Why do we change when we know there is a recording of our idea of self ?
Each morning I would wake up and make tea or pour a beer and smoke fags and record myself listening to the recordings from the day before and type poems and write diaries about the audio content: how it made me feel, what or who was I hearing. Writing and processing the images and emotions and soundscapes I’d captured. These morning poetry sessions and recordings became a loop of the days before-before-before and the typing-typing-typing and the sound of writing-writing-writing. A mirror looping into a mirror looping into a mirror. I remember I wrote about the sound of October and the autumn leaves and my adventures in Soho and all the people I’d bumped into and chatted and drank with the day before. I wrote about performance, how we perform when we don’t need to. What is real and what is unreal. What is expected? If nobody is looking, are we more ourselves to ourselves?
In pubs and bars (for I was mad and young and out drinking every night) I would tell people, I am recording my life on earth, it’s a poetry experiment and notice them begin to either shout and perform for me and the tape, or go quiet and change when they knew, I knew, they knew they were being recorded.
I forgot about it until now. I’m not going to open the box, not this year. Maybe in another ten years’ time. I know the box is down in the basement, but no, not now, I won’t open it now, it is enough to know it is there, sealed and dusty, it is good to know it is down there. I am gazing out of my window at the orange leafy October light and remembering it and that era.
I recall one tape: I’m with my mum in an M&S changing room as she is making me get fitted for a new bra. We are laughing. It is a moment of intimacy and love. And on another tape I’m with Oli, we’re drinking absinthe up high on the edge of the Hastings cliffs and singing death wishes into the abyss. I want to jump into the stormy sea. I record a taste of loss. Now we are here, and in this October, and the leaves
still
fall.
‘October Tape Experiment’ is a gentle mediation on autumn and nostalgia, memory and timelessness, sensing the years passing us by. Seasons changing and the times changing, but some things never changing.
I’m sharing this new poetry-film made in collaboration with my dear friend, film maker and artist Wolfgang Dubieniec. This is our third poetry-film collaboration, following on from earlier pieces we shared last summer, ‘While Justice Waits’ and ‘2084’ which you will also find here on my substack.
‘October Tape Experiment’ is published in my latest collection ‘With Love, Grief and Fury’ by Canongate Books. The red paperback edition was published this month, October 2025.
This month this collection has been awarded a Special Commendation by The Poetry Book Society and a High Commendation in this years Forward Prizes in the ‘best single poem - performed’ category for my protest poem ‘Dirty Old Men’ which is quite fitting given recent events and this weeks front page news.
‘With Love, Grief and Fury’ has also been shortlisted for this years Books Are My Bag Readers Awards in the Poetry category. The voting closes on Sunday October 26th. If you like, you can find out more, choose your favourite books in seven categories and vote here: https://www.nationalbooktokens.com
Also, check out more of Wolfgangs amazing art and photos, films and music: https://www.wolfgangdubieniec.co.uk
I’m on a UK tour right now, loving sharing poetry and meeting beautiful and bold and brave poets and artists again. I must admit it’s feeling different out there, the whole country feels heavy, the tears are flowing easy, the hugs are plenty. I’ll write a proper tour diary post later …
For now I’ll just let you know that tonight I’m at a sold-out show at the Watershed in Bristol, hosted by Danny Carlo Pandolfi (Raise the Bar) and Jake Wild Hall (Bad Betty) with Antosh Wojcik, Desree and Rowan Lyster. This weekend I’ll be chatting about ‘Bog People - A Working class Anthology of Folk Horror’ with AK Blakemore at Norwich Book Festival. I have also just been invited to perform alongside Anoushka Shankar and Friends, at a winter fundraiser for Choose Love, November 4th, details below. Here’s a handful of dates and links, catch me if you can...
Thank you for listening and watching, more soon....
BIGlove Xxsg
Raise The Bar, Watershed
Norwich Book Festival
Soap Box, The New Wolsey Theatre
Choose Love, Union Chapel
Status Flo, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Ledbury Poetry Festival
Nottingham Poetry Festival
Links: https://buythebook.online/salena-godden
