Skin

Oct 01, 2025

THERE IS A SKIN ON EVERYTHING
AND IT STOPS THE LIGHT GETTING IN

There is a skin on everything and it stops the light getting in.

You are living in here, in there, inside your skin. You grow into your skin. You get comfortable in your own skin. Black skin. White skin. Hard skin. Soft skin. Skin as tight as the skin of a drum. Skin that gives, a skin that yields. The first thing we see when we meet someone is the face, the face they use to face us. And when you think about it we are all here by luck ... by the skin of our teeth. We camouflage our skin, chameleon inside our skin. We paint our faces and perfect our masks.

There is a skin on everything and it stops the light getting in.

There is a membrane on the eyes, so you look but don't see. A skin that acts as a filter, a magnifying glass, a mirror, so you see your perspective up close, so you see what you want to see, and what you choose to accept … because seeing is believing. We mute or block the things we don't want to see. The truth is often hidden, blinkered, fact and fiction. The new alternative truth. We hide in the hide - We hide in the skin of the animal we truly are. But we cannot ever hide from our true colours, true nature and true spirit.

January 20th 2017: The Hague

I type these thoughts in my hotel room. I’m here in Holland as a guest speaker at The Writers Unlimited Festival - Winternachten. Sometimes you have to go outside to go inside. I switch off this computer and take a walk around this beautiful Dutch city. I am thinking about this essay, the theme of skin. Black skin. White skin. I have the words of Leonard Cohen’s 'Anthem' in my headphones, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. I take my title for this essay from that beautiful song. It makes me recall the flaw in every story that reveals the truth, the words beneath the words. It makes me think of the charm of our imperfections. And there is a skin on everything that stops the light getting in, a wallpaper of doubt or fear that covers over those cracks and stops the magic happening, the light getting through.

Last night the Winternachten festival opened with a ceremony for the Oxfam Novid Pen awards for freedom of expression. The winners were two courageous writers: The Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh who is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in Saudi Arabia accused of renouncing Islam. And Indian investigative journalist Malini Subramaniam who was forced to leave her home after death threats following her outspoken reports on human rights abuse and sexual violence against women. Her humility and courage as a woman and as a writer, a shining example to us all. Later during the ceremony, the Booker Prize winning author Michail Shishkin delivered a keynote speech, his words moved me. The theatre was so silent you could hear a pin drop, a stifled sniff and a tear fall. His deep voice resounded in his native Russian and above his head the English translation scrolled on huge screens. He began by describing the famous protests of human rights organisations in Red Square. Then he spoke of lesser known protests, the names that nobody knows, the writers and protesters that have been tortured and murdered, quietly, out of sight, and out of the public eye. Shishkin asked us to consider why they protested? Listening to Shishkin I was reminded of the power of freedom of speech, how important it is as a writer to speak up and to live true rather than to stay quiet and live safe. The meaning of life, Shishkin continued, lies not in survival, but in the preservation of dignity.

“Keep silent: And when they come for you tomorrow the next person will be silent.”

His warning sent a chill up my spine, his voice resonating around the room, bold and clear. Perhaps now more than ever, because this was the weekend of the Women's March, and all over the world millions of people took to the streets to march in the name of women's rights, human rights, for peace, choice, humanity and equality. I want to break through the skin, our complacency, and challenge the barriers that allow us to be silent.

There is a skin on everything and it stops the light getting in. Stops the truth getting through. There is a skin over your ear, that filters the words so you don't hear. I am learning to listen. I hope you hear this, this is the song I sing, love is the answer to everything. The skin of love is durable, made strong with tolerance, empathy and kindness. Everybody counts, not one person gets left behind. We are living in here, in there, inside our skin. You grow into your skin. You get comfortable in your own skin. Now is the time to speak up and to live lively, to be your true colours and see the whole panorama and let the light in.

In this series of essays, we asked five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Beginning with something quite tangible, each piece unfolds to tell a story that is deeply personal and also far-reaching. Poet and writer Salena Godden talks about her relationship with her skin and a particular line from a Leonard Cohen song….

'There is a skin on everything and it stops the light getting in' broadcast February 2017, hear the full essay on BBC iPlayer, click here

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Hello my lovelies,

Sorry to be so long to send a new juicy post to you.

I felt like sharing this excerpt of this BBC essay today.

Sometimes I feel like I am repeating myself. Paraphrasing Toni Morrison, but, that is what racism does, the work of racism is to keep you going in circles arguing semantics. Bigotry comes around, again and again, to burn the world down, the fascists wave their little flags, and one cannot help but think how we all already wrote everything about it, how the late great Assata Shakur and James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and so many others wrote it better, how Octavia Butler warned us, how Nina Simone sang the furious blues against it. But how we must keep speaking out and showing up to do the work.

‘Skin’ was broadcast the winter of 2017 — I do sometimes wonder if there are any more words left in me to illustrate how I feel, how people are made of love the same, that we are much stronger united together, that we are all closer to the gutter than the moon, that we are sharing the same air and water on the same fragile earth spinning in space. I have nothing but shame and disgust at recent events, how some men will gladly kneel to gold they will never touch, bend to a crown worn by a king that hates them, how they will parade the flag of a corrupt government that lies, steals and wholly disregards us all, and as they yell and rant about ‘taking the country back’ the billionaires who profit in dirty arms deals, laugh all the way to the bank, using all of this darkness, this fear and division to make more war and profit.

‘Skin’ was written back in 2017 and is still available online, in the piece I recall the time when I first met Ece Temelkuran in The Hague. I urge you all to go and pre-order her incredibly powerful new book Nation Of Strangers, it is published by Canongate, February 2026. I have a proof copy I have been keeping by my side this last few weeks, it is a compass right now, it is a lighthouse in my pocket, I highly recommend you pre-order it here.

For me, personally, the last few weeks have flown by with so many tears cried, words written and miles covered. I completed another draft of a new book whilst watching caterpillars become butterflies and summer turn to autumn. Then I hit the road to do the Live Poetry Book Club Tour, a gorgeous set of intimate and community-spirited gigs in the west, St Agnes, Exeter and Bath.

Then we gathered and did a stunning show to celebrate the 10th birthday of OWN IT! at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank. It was a really magic and memorable night, a plethora of talented and creative voices, I’m just waiting for some footage and will share with you in a later post. Thank you to all who made it to this very special one-off show.

I went to Wembley to the incredible Together for Palestine concert and balled my eyes out at all the beauty and unity and passion and rage and humanitarian spirit I felt in that room that one night. It was an incredible show of solidarity and Choose Love are still match raising funds here.

Meanwhile, Matt Abbott and Amah-Rose Abrams and I have started a NEW Substack page for our Roaring 20s Radio Show, please give us a follow. We decided we want a Substack page to share content from now and our last five years of making our Roaring 20’s Radio shows for Soho Radio, to boost our top picks and news from the show, the best of the arts, books, poetry, music, activism and more, so watch that space.

Talking of podcasts, I was so delighted to see my poetry in Spanish translation in the September edition of The Madrid Review and to be featured on their podcast. We shared a wonderful chat and I read a poem. Huge thank you to all who made this happen, I love Madrid Review and I hope to come and see you at Desperate Literature Bookshop in Madrid soon.

In September I also went home to perform at the brilliant Hastings Book Festival and launched the POET TOWN anthology, which was a glorious, celebratory, evening. There are hardback and paperback editions of the poetry anthology out now, celebrating 200 years of Hastings poets and poetry. There is also a poets portraits book by photographer Maxine Silver, the books are stunning and you can see and order copies here.

Then to finish up Septembers travels, I went all the way up to Loch Ness to teach a Life Writing Course at Moniack Mhor with Louisa Young and guest speaker Michel Faber. It was an intense writing adventure, filled with grief and tears, courage and laughter, and the most glorious big starry skies and roaring fires.

Coming up: October 9th we launch the new red paperback editions of With Love, Grief and Fury - I’m back on tour now and coming to a town near you, here’s October’s diary below with links. Thank you to Tina Sederholm for an interview ahead of the first show — read here — Today I am catching the train to Oxford to perform at Everything’s Working Out Poetically at the Old Fire Station Theatre. Then I will be at Henley Lit Fest on October 5th with a wicked double bill with Hollie McNish. Then next week we celebrate the paperback release; October 9th we are at Libreria Book Shop (off Brick Lane) with conversations and poems with Nikita Gill, then we go up town to Oxford Street to launch the paperback with the Poetry Pharmacy on October 16th, please do come along, join us, all welcome!