Waiting for Godden

Click here to see Smile For London film & gigs & news

2012-01-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

MIRROR FISH

mirror fish, slippery, mercury quick

sharp as a blade, gone in a click

drawn by the heat, when two people meet

soon as you fall in love, they get fishy cold feet

look behind the mirror - there is no-one at all

whats behind a mirror? nothing but a brick wall

Words by Salena Godden & Animation by Ivo Sousa Click Here to see the film!

Scroll down for an exclusive - read the full poem Mirror Fish below!

The vimeo page is now public: http://vimeo.com/34780242

Ivo Sousa website is this: www.ivo-sousa.com

And here's a link to the lovely film Jonah made from the launch night, features Murray Lachlan Young & Daniel Cockrill & Dan Simpson & Nikesh Shukla & many more! http://vimeo.com/35456485

Have any of you seen these terrific animated poems on the London Underground yet? Makes January all the brighter! The films are on display across 60 digital screens on the London Underground every morning (7am-10am) and evening (4pm -7pm) Tube stations include: Angel, Camden Town, Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Knightsbridge, Paddington, Euston, Piccadilly Circus, Victoria and Waterloo. The schedule of films can be found at www. smileforlondon.com

...COMING UP...

JANUARY 26TH - THE HIP YAK POETRY SHACK

FEBRUARY 2ND - THE SALON

FEBRUARY 3RD - POET IN RESIDENCE - JICARO, NICARAGUA

FEBRUARY 25TH - BBC RADIO 4 - GUEST POET ON SATURDAY LIVE

with Sir Ken Robinson, Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4

FEBRUARY 25TH - WORD WRESTLING PAGE MATCH

Mirror Fish

the mirror fish is a slippery guest

your first impression you must not second guess

mirror fish are just your reflection to view

your perception, a deception, that’s projected by you

you gawk like narcsissus on the vision so clear

the fish stares straight back, its disarming and queer

slippery, silver and mercury quick

as sharp as a blade and then gone in a click

the mirror fish is clever and will steal your heart

leaving you wanting much more, than you did from the start

drawn by the heat when two people meet

and as soon as you’ve fallen in love they get fishy cold feet

and so neatly the mirror fish slips in, by such clever disguise

reflecting the you inside you, by gazing in through your eyes

and if you look behind the mirror there is no-one at all

for what is behind a mirror? nothing but a brick wall

THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE:

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short story: fuck tea. fuck toast

2012-01-13T02:41:00.000-08:00

*i read a excerpt of this story at the 'Smile for London' launch this week and thought i would share it here, its a love story set in the London underground, a tale of yearning and wanting, a thoroughly modern Brief Encounter...

fuck tea. fuck toast

a 'brief encounter' for the 21st century

Fuck being safe, fuck playing safe. in fact fuck playing. fuck being careful. fuck giving a fuck. fuck killing it and fuck damping it down. fuck blocking it and clocking in, fuck ticking the boxes and fuck the box. fuck the rehearsals and fuck the show. fuck fuck fuck. fuck doing what’s best and fuck being a good girl. fuck being a good boy. fuck routine. fuck the sysyem. fuck money and fuck the banks. fuck the power and fuck the mind fuck mind fuck mind the gap fuck. mind the fucking gap fuck. fuck control and fuck being controlled and fuck being controlling. fuck the dream and fuck the sleep. fuck food. fuck tea. fuck toast. fuck it. fuck being reasonable and fuck being sensible. fuck. fuck holding back and fuck fighting with one arm behind your fucking back. fuck. fuck holding it in and fuck sucking it up and fuck holding it back. fuck holding on to anything. fuck holding your breath. fuck wondering when its going to begin and fuck wondering if its over yet. fuck. fuck hoping its going to start and fuck hoping it will end. fuck. fuck home and fuck there is no such place as home. fuck playing safe. fuck playing at all. fuck being serious about anything and fuck not being serious enough. fuck faking. fuck taking. fuck making all that fucking carry on about some fucking shit you don’t even give enough of a fuck about to even give a minute of your fucking time to fucking remember to give a fuck about it, fuck, so why are you fucking cracking on about fuck it all now? fuck fucking fuck…he said.

He said, of course it fucking hurts that’s why its called fucking sun burn, clues in the fucking name for it right there…and when it hurts you just think, oh it hurts, and then you think so what if it hurts, get on with it, cos what else are you going to fucking do? waste of time that, saying oh it hurts, deal with it, that’s why its called fucking sun burn, cos its burnt for fucks sake. look at my sunburn, he said…

Does it hurt? I asked…

Of course it hurts, it just pain and being alive has got pain in it. that’s life. life is hard and full of things that hurt. wear a fucking crash hat. deal with it. fucking cunts. not you, you are not a cunt…of course not cos you are a lady. are you laughing? why are you laughing? is it because I’m funny? do you think I'm funny? I like your laugh! it makes me laugh. can I ask you something? are you wearing contact lenses? am I wearing contact lenses? no, why did you ask if I am? because I asked if you were? they are blue. real blue. yours are kind of blue as well. look see no lenses, just eyeball, poke it if you like, if you don’t believe me, poke my fucking eye, it don’t hurt. gimme your finger and touch my eyeball, see no contact lens there, just me fucking eyeball.

I am on the tube and the drunk boy on the train is pretty. his eyebrows are pale gold and his lips are loose. the back of his tan neck begs kissing and nibbling. he is convinced he is coming home with me. how come? lets go back one move, ten minutes ago, he got into the train carriage with me. go back another move, twenty minutes ago we talked at the ticket machine. go back further, he was outside the pub and he followed me into the tube station. rushing to catch the last tube to north london. hang on, now go back one more scene about forty five minutes ago, we were in the same pub. his friend spilt my drink. then insisted on buying me another. then they made us do a shot of something.

I laughed and said that was how they got to talk to pretty girls, spill their drinks on them and make them talk to them then? are you pretty girls then? he winked arrogantly. well I haven’t heard any complaints lately I volleyed back. well you seem to be talking to us anyway. yes I do now don’t I.

Closing time. as I was leaving, he, that one, the one with the soft cheeks, flushed with alcohol, the one there, with that one freckle between the bristle and his top lip. imagine that soft cheek and that freckle against your inner thigh…but yes, he leaned over and said lady, take me home with you and I paused and then nodded and yesnoyesnomaybenoyesnoyno no no….he must have only heard the nodding part.

Next thing I know…he’s adorable.

I mean, the next thing I know, he is following me down the escalators and every few steps he drops his money, pound coins roll across the polished tube station floor. I bend down and pick them up and give them to him and each time after time, he says thank you. thank you. thank you. I laugh and he laughs too. then he puts them back into his trouser pockets full of holes, again and again.

He says, fucking holes. should sew them holes up. you are right, he repeats himself, I fucking should sew them up. do you know I have seven pairs of trousers and do you know all of them have no pockets that work, all got holes, he says.

Oh let me sew your trouser pockets, make you pies, soap your back into a lather and gently pet your sleeping head. I think and I smile at him. I like him, I like people with broken teeth, ripped pockets and worn down heels. I love him. I love you and your damaged goods. you are a chink in the china and a tarnished tea spoon. I know that you and me, we could hold onto the torn sails together of a sinking ship and weather a storm and I know we’d find dry land.

We could smash up the furniture and throw the splinters on a fire to keep warm. we could blag it, rinse them all and get away with murder. you’d repair some of my fractures. but still match my broken parts. but you could never damage me any more than I already am or my ill repaired patchwork head would already allow. we’d be good as new. we’d be held together with saftey pins and the bitterness of disparage and sour experience would force us to work together, to get along and get on with it. We’d peel the eyes off potatoes and make them chips all good again, eat them on the grand sofa of this journey. and we may as well get comfortable since we are here, we chose the path, we’ll find our way eventually, the long way around.

Darling, I keep picking up stray cats and underdogs, I never learn, I have no umbrella and in London it is raining cats and dogs.

He thinks I will take him home with me. In fact he is sure of it. I am thinking I might take him home too. and for a few stops, I am convinced of it as clapham bleeds into waterloo and chunders into charing cross. we are in central london now. the halfway point, no turning back or is there? he is beside me, engaged, engrossed in chatting to me about anything and everything. is it too late to turn back?

His eyes are a blue fire, lively as life itself, self assured and his nature is true to form, a drunk and plucky young man. now there’s a truth. I wonder what I will do with him at my house anyway. I picture him in my kitchen and then I imagine him in my bed. then even worse than that, I begin to wonder how old he might be. and once I start thinking that it’s a downward spiral. I realise now that he must be much, much younger than me. and worst of all for once it bothers me. that he is so young and wasted. and I don’t know his name. I fast forward to tomorrow morning. daylight ripping open the darkness, morningness screaming onto twisted sheets. sweat and spunk. spit and exchange. tea and toast. headaches and mess. deadlines and socks. conscience and guilt. condoms and awkwardness. emails and phones ringing. lips and eyes.

But what eyes he has, what eyes he has indeed, so blue. they are so blue. it always begins with the eyes and ends, ends with the eyes too remember. lashes fluttering, battering down the doors and walls of my give a fuck. fuck. fuck. tottenham court road. where do you live? I ask him, where do you live? again I ask him, where do you live? that was tottenham court road. he mumbles, sydenham. where? sydenham. where is sydenham? he laughs. I ask him again. eventually he replies south east london. then you are on the wrong train. but I am coming home with you. no. you cannot come home with me. yes I can. no you can’t. I can. no. I thought I was coming home with you. oh go on. no. oh. oh. oh ok am I not coming home with you then? no. if you get off here you can catch the last train back south just cross the platform and…

Gone. the eyes. goodbye blue eyes. goodbye freckle. gone away now.

Just me and my own reflection and my fucking head going home alone. fuck being sensible. fuck being careful. fuck deadlines. fuck giving a fuck. fuck getting an early night and fucking fuck fuck fuck….fuck tea. fuck toast.

First published in 'Yours Generally' Book Club Boutique Books

Look out for my poem 'Mirror Fish' on the London Underground, animated by the brilliant Ivo Sousa!

Smile For London launches on January 16th -
Here's a teaser trailer: http://vimeo.com/34987749

Quick Update: Gigs & News / Winter 2012

2012-01-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick guide with links to cool gigs & news buzzing away at the beginning of 2012:

JANUARY 11TH:

Going underground: Have you heard about Smile For London
Launching tomorrow in London's fashionable Shoreditch, some very clever people intend to make London SMILE in what we all know is the most miserable time of year, from January 16th, when you take the London Underground you will find animated poetry films, with words by the likes of the following: Benjamin Zephaniah / Murray Lachlan Young / Ray Davies / Jarvis Cocker / Rick Holland / Courttia Newland / Nikesh Shukla / Cerys Matthews / Scroobius Pip / Inua Ellams / Kate Tempest / Mikill Pane / Luke Wright / Jack Underwood / Francesca Beard / Polarbear / Joshua Idehen / Ross Sutherland / Musa Okwonga / Hollie McNish / Dan Cockrill & Martin Galton of Bang Said The Gun / Emily Berry / Paul Lyalls / Salena Godden / Jon Burgerman / Hexstatic / 12foot6 / Studio AKA / Why Not Associates / Malcolm Garrett / Trunk / MIE / Shroom / James Bates…and more....

Follow them on twitter @smileforlondon

Smile For London launches on January 16th -
Here's a teaser trailer: http://vimeo.com/34987749

Look out for my poem 'Mirror Fish' on the London Underground, animated by the brilliant Ivo Sousa!
CLICK HERE FOR IVO SOUSA WEBSITE

JANUARY 19TH:

I will be in Clapham hosting and reading a poem for Gil at a sell-out tribute to GSH. This month the fabulous Book Slam have teamed up with Canongate Books and XL Recordings to celebrate the life of legendary poet, novelist and hip hop pioneer, Gil Scott-Heron and the launch of his posthumous memoir, 'The Last Holiday', at The Clapham Grand on the 19th Jan! Hosted by Salena Godden. Guests will include Kate Tempest, Ben Mellor and iconic DJs and tastemakers Jamie XX and Gilles Peterson playing a one-off, back-to-back musical tribute to the great man.

Follow then on twitter @bookslam and click here for the facebook page too

JANUARY 25TH:

We all head to the beautiful town of Bath for Hip Yak Poetry Shack will be at the Porter Cellar, Bath. Featuring Salena Godden, Chris Redmond, Liv Torc, Jonny Fluffypunk along with the Hip Yak Slam, previous slam winner David Oakwook

FEBRUARY 2ND:

Back in London and sizzling for the cupidity of Valentines - its all about Dark Romance at Salon. Screenwriter John Foster will be getting to the heart of psychological drama in film. President of PEN Lisa Appignanesi who has written a scientific treatment of ‘Love: An Anatomy of An Unruly Emotion’ will be taking the Salon crowd on an intimate journey of how love shapes our lives and our world. And raconteur and maitresse of the Book Club Boutique, Salena Godden will be on hand to explain poetic love and its enduring allure...Get your tickets here: http://www.salon-london.com/

follow them on twitter @SalonLondon

FEBRUARY 25TH
Word Wrestling Federation: Word Match / The Roundhouse. Camden. London
A Word Wrestling Grudge Match between the Best Poetry Collectives in the UK.
BANG SAID THE GUN v RUBIX v DIRTY HANDS v ROUNDHOUSE POETRY COLLECTIVE v WORD OF MOUTH v CHILL PILL v APPLES & SNAKES
Judges: Dark The Invader • Salena ‘The General’ Godden • Niall ‘The Saint’ O'Sullivan

follow them on twitter @bangsaidthegun & click here for facebook event page

SaltPeter live on BBC London: something lovely from the archives...

2012-01-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a vintage SaltPeter clip: http://snd.sc/zJWBuv

It features SaltPeter tracks 'Your Wife' and 'Everybody Back To Mine'

Plus two poems titled 'This Poem' and 'I Don't Do Love'

Salena Godden & Peter Coyte live on BBC Radio London with Gerry Lyseight, Planet Mambo.

Huge thanks to Patrick Rosalba for sending us this wicked link!

See the 'Everybody Back To Mine' video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQlkPzdiyLs

If you want to hear more

check out the 'Hungers The Best Sauce' album

its available on www.myspace.com/wearesaltpeter

Plus itunes, amazon and lastfm...etc etc...

BANANA MOON: A short story from the archives

2011-12-21T02:13:00.000-08:00

Banana Moon

- A Kinda Christmas Story -

It was nearly Christmas but I was broke and I was hiding. I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world. I liked my own company, that is to say I could bare it. I absorbed most of my solitude in writing and reading books. I’d take a walk sometimes, but it was never easy to leave the house. I looked at the time, it was already past three in the afternoon. I had been reading since waking at eight and I didn’t want to finish my book or I’d have nothing to read in the middle of the night. I had bathed and had some tea but I hadn’t dressed yet. I looked at the sky, a lovely wintry December blue and I thought it would do me some good to take one of my walks - I needed to get out of the house.

Not giving myself a chance to bottle out, I threw on a coat, scarf and boots over my pajamas and descend the stairs. I saw a packet had come in the post. It was from Yorkshire and addressed to Miss Saliva. I opened it and discovered somebody had printed and made mini-booklets out of one of my poems. It was a funny little hashed together thing, photocopied and cheaply made. It had a yellow paper pages. It was being sold for twelve pence per copy. They had scribbled little matchstick men on each page, it was a poor mans flick book. The poem was squew-whiff, the words slanted off the page. I grinned, I quite liked that the poem had its own life, its own little book. It was a poem which made people laugh, so the joke would spread. The idea that a complete stranger had done this and that somewhere there were a thousand copies of these yellow fellas being sold for twelve pence each up north somewhere made me happy, I let out a little laugh and walked towards the Heath.

I think it was the noise that got my attention first, the swish-swish sound. Or maybe it was the lights through the branches. No I remember it was the two schoolboys packing large snowballs in their gloved hands. I stared and wondered: where had they got snow? Perhaps a car windscreen or the rooftop of the park cafe but that seemed unlikely. It was a crisp December, the weathermen had told us there was to be no white Christmas this year. Then it as I looked at the snowballs, I heard the swish swish and it was then I saw the fairy lights, the tops of tents and I heard a generator. My heart raced, I swallowed a lump of excitement and hurried around the hedge to see for myself and there it was. Ice-skating, a real outdoor ice-skating rink. I followed the arrowed signs to the entrance and saw a young couple holding hands going around in unison making that swish-swish; there was a man clutching the fence at the side while his friend looked on laughing

Ice skating what a wonderful idea. I wanted to call someone, anyone, to come and see, to come and skate. I didn’t have ten pence to phone anyone and besides there wasn’t a soul I could think of, everyone has real jobs and is so busy at Christmas. Maybe another day I would ask someone to come and skate with me. I went to take a programme, I read the leaflet and discovered the ice rink would be there for a whole six weeks.

Its not that I particularly like ice-skating but I smiled and carried on walking, with the swish-swish of skates in my head. The movie rolled on in my head, a film played of us, of you and me, ice-skating wearing furs and mittens, holding hands. Of you and I laughing and falling over, yes you, you would fall over and I would help you back up. Then we’d race and go around and around, we’d spin round holding both hands. You might begin to show off and skate backwards and knock a little girl over and her dad would frown and waggle his finger at us and that would be funny too. Ah and then that lovely ache in our thighs from the skating and our ribs from the laughing. The light weight of your foot when I finally managed to pull your ice-skate off for you. Then maybe we’d sit beneath the fairy-lights and have a hot chocolate or a mulled wine, flushed and red faced, hats and scarves, kisses and Christmas cakes, huddled together. And afterwards maybe we’d go to the pub opposite for Sunday lunch. What a perfect Sunday that would be one day, another day, sometime. It was open until late and the idea of ice-skating at twilight seemed magical and romantic. I would love to do that one day.

I continued up towards Parliament Hill. The low sun made the wet grass glow a dark orange-red and I liked imagining skating with you one dusky evening at sunset.

I saw some women with three-wheeled pushchairs and overheard them boring holes into each other with talk about each of their babies. Look a kite! One said, look Marquis, a kite, she said pointing upwards. But the toddler could not have been more non-plussed and dazed. Instead Marquis was staring at the pavement and a dog lapping out of a puddle, not looking up at all, not a jot. I looked where she was pointing and the kite was impressive, part parachute, it was dragging its owner along the wet grass on his knees, he had special kneepads on for it to do that, the kite was a sky-dog yanking on its lead.

I sat on a bench and I watched a girl on the next bench muttering into a Dictaphone. She was observing me, looking over, up and down, I knew she’d write about me when she got in, I knew because I knew I would write about her. She had a pointy elf-hat, scruffy curls framed her face, she had a stubby nose. She also had the same look in her eyes I knew I had. That glaze, that been-inside-alone-staring-at-a-screen too long look.

I thought she might be a writer, I liked to think she was. I smiled at her but she didn’t see. Then I felt self-conscious and hid my face in my scarf. She re-wound her tape and listened intently back to herself as she walked away.

I wondered if I should have brought my Dictaphone out too, but I cannot bear the sound of my own voice at the moment its too brutal, too shrill and too wet. Recently I have had something serious playing on my mind, like the lack of daylight, like a dark weight. Its as though I am taking it all very seriously, I can see a dark cloud above my head, its like a stone in a shoe, but above my head, I know its a temporary state, like all states.

The mothers started screaming Grace! Grace! Grace, they screamed Grace! I thought what an unfortunate name for a dog, the word Grace should never she screamed, it must not be shouted across a park, yelled at a stinky mutt licking out puddles, it kills the meaning of the word, makes it undignified. I wish they had called their dog Freedom or even Free Ice-cream or halleluiah or eureka or wannaseemyboobs!

Then I stopped watching people and let myself stare directly at the huge glowing rock of magenta sun, an amethyst December sky, glorious and all the shades of plum and wine with clouds of dark lavender. I breathed and was quite content to watch as it quickly started disappearing.

I overheard someone say its a Turner sky and I thought yes it is isn’t it, a Turner sunset and I wanted to say I knew exactly the painting she meant, I wanted to tell her I knew Turners anniversary, December 19th, but instead I buried my face deeper into my scarf.

I could hear the heavy panting of a passing jogger, somebody’s mobile phone, the name Grace being hollered like one might scream thief and the flapping of the kite-sky-dog. I watched the sunset contentedly listening to everyone else’s lives around me. There was the rumble of a train coming into Gospel Oak Station in the distance below and for as long as I wanted I could stare at the sun until I could see coloured spots.

I remembered reading a magazine and someone clever saying in an interview they didn’t believe in sunsets. What’s not to believe in? I pondered, there’s no argument, we all agree the sun rises and the sun sets, I decided then if I ever remembered where I had read it I’d write to that magazine and I began to compose a letter that began, Dear Sirs, Imagine my disappointment upon reading aforementioned article to discover clever clogs does not believe in sun sets…

Maybe they meant they didn’t believe in spending time to watch a sunset, maybe, but that’s like saying I don’t believe in seeing rain falling onto the window pane, I don’t believe in hearing thunder, I don’t believe in snow, catching snow on your tongue. I bloody do, I believe, I believe in sunsets I whispered.

It was then the lady sat next to me. She was dressed in purple, a burgundy bobble hat, fuchsia scarf and gloves and she matched the sky. I had to look twice, she was having a laugh, it was as though she had come to watch the sunset in camouflage, she was exactly the same colours as all the sky and the whole sun setting. Her cheeks bloomed a reddy colour too. She was a December fairy, a sunset angel, I told myself. She said hullo and sat next to me and I listened to see if I could hear her thoughts or if she could hear mine. I tried to think good things, Christmas things so if she was magic she would look upon me favourably. I asked her telepathically if she came here often to watch sunset at Christmas time. I told her I believe, I believe in sunsets do you? There was no reply. I couldn’t hear any special voices, she had no message for me, she didn’t start flying about or give me a magic Christmas sunset badge, her get-up matched the sky and that was all there was and as far as it would go. I was disappointed frankly.

Then I heard her rustling and getting something out of a plastic bag. I looked around and we were alone, we were the only two people sitting down and we were surrounded by empty benches, why did she sit next to me? I looked at the vast sky like an ocean of damson juice and at all the empty benches and wondered why on earth she had chosen to come and sit next to me? Then I looked in horror to see she was eating a banana. A big bright yellow banana. I could hear her jaw moving, I could feel her teeth sinking into the flesh with each bite, I could taste it too. It was so, so terribly yellow and I hated that she was eating that banana. I tried to ignore it and stare deeper into the sun until I was blinded. I tried to picture her eating blackcurrants but then I imagined her gloved hands all full of sticky jam.

Above us the half-moon was rising, ghostly white and the shape of a slice of melon. I thought if the moon had been in a banana shape it would have matched and it would have made sense, but there was no sense in this otherwise. I mean a banana? I could not get my head around it. I wished she had been eating a big half moon slice of purple melon then it would have been all right, the correct colour and I would have forgiven her. It was as if the banana clashed, it was too much, too summer and too tropical and not the right shape or season and I got up in disgust.

I wanted to say to her: Why? Why a banana? It doesn’t make any sense? You were the sky; you were the purple setting sun, why did you spoil everything with all that yellow? Tell me why? To think I thought you were the December angel or even a sunset fairy…

I stood up and momentarily looked down at her and shook my head, disillusioned, it was as if she had done something unspeakable and intrusive, it was as if she had passed wind or asked me for money. I tutted at her, sniffed and marched purposely away in a diagonal across a field, only narrowly avoiding getting

entangled with the kite sailor gliding waves of pockets of air with his kite parachute powered boat.

I took wide strides down a muddy bank and I walked by the lake. I started to snigger remembering the poor sunset fairy and her face as I scowled at her. She was something magic, for look at me laughing, the black cloud slipped away and it wasn’t so serious after all was it.

I felt in my pockets, I had the programme for the ice-skating in one pocket and in the other pocket one of those yellow photocopied booklets of my poem. I walked up to a tree and stuffed them both into a hole in the trunk. Whoever finds thus poem in a hole in this tree will go ice-skating and will believe in sun sets. This made me happy. The idea of someone finding that poem in the heart of a tree by the lake, yes, that made me truly happy.

With a skip in my step, I remembered you, maybe we’ll see each other soon and maybe we’ll go ice skating, maybe we’ll take a walk or maybe we’ll just talk on the phone but if you read this I wish you a very merry Christmas and all the magic of the season. I wish you a prosperous and peaceful new year. I see you smiling and it makes me grin like its not all so serious, it’s a serious as a monkey in a banana moon. There was a last vibrant splash of cherry across a darkening sky, I turned my collar up and headed homewards down the hill, I heard myself singing…

Say its only a paper moon

sailing over a cardboard sea

But it wouldn’t be make believe

if you believed in me

Yes its only a canvas sky

hanging over a muslin tree

But it wouldn’t be make believe

if you believed in me…

© December 2005. Salena Godden / © New version: December 2011

Mose: I got scruples too, you know. You know what that is... scruples?

Addie: No, I don't know what it is, but if you got 'em, sure bet they belong to somebody else.

Website: www.thebookclubboutique.com

Out Now 'UNDER THE PIER' published by Nasty Little Press: www.nastylittlepress.org

Out Now: SIXTY-SIX Books:

http://oberonbooks.com/66-books.html

Out Now: RACONTEUR:

http://www.parthianbooks.com/content/raconteur-america

For quick updates twitter: @BookCBoutique or @salenagodden

Also check out these sites for published work by Salena Godden:

www.shortfirepress.com

www.paraphiliamagazine.com

www.tellermagazine.com

www.eatmytangerine.com

NEW: Spotify playlists for Monday’s Xmas Party!!!

2011-12-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hello and good evening to all!!

Can you hear me? Hello? Its me...the General...hello?

Top secret message:

BCBoutique operatives can now add tunes to our Spotify playlists for Monday night. This means that if you cannot make the party because you are abroad, under cover, a prisoner of war, handcuffed to a radiator or simply engaged in combat elsewhere then you can be there in spirit by choosing a track to put on our list! And if you don't have Spotify? You can post your requests and one of our happy elves will add them to the party playlist!

Go here to add your favourite tunes:
www.thebookclubboutique.com

Your mission begins:

7pm /19th Decemberry

Territory:

El Camion - codename Dicks Bar - with a wink wink nudge, touch your nose, tug your ear and ask for The Pink Chihuahua, 25 Brewer St, Soho.

Please get there early as you can and if you have them bring your BCB membership cards!

Don't forget the disguise: Mexican.

Dress code: Frida Kahlo, wear Red and get your Margarita swigging knickers on!

Now sing: "Ding Dong! Merrily I'm High!"

The General xx

*in the good name of books, booze and boogie-woogie eat this page after reading this most secret missive....

The Book Club Boutique Xmas Social: Free party for all our friends!!

2011-12-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

Huzzah! The Book Club Boutique return to Soho for one night only!

Its a reunion and its a Christmas knees up and its a happening downstairs at El Camion - codename 'Dicks Bar' - This year we have a Mexican feel for Christmas! The brilliant Bea Bradsell, daughter of cocktail legend Dick Bradsell will be serving tasty margaritas, there will be pepper and spice and all things nice, Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie for you to warm your hearts and toast your cockles on the nearly- eve of winters solstice.

DRESS CODE: Frida Kahlo / Mexican Wrestler / wear Red or wear a Sombrero!

ENTRANCE: Free!!! £zero!!! $nada!!!

You are all invited to a gathering of some of The Book Club Boutique's finest!
So far we can confirm performance and readings by:
TIM WELLS, FRANCESCA BEARD, NATHAN PENLINGTON, NIALL O'SULLIVAN, MC ANGEL, POETCURIOUS, XAVIER LERET, AMAH-ROSE MCKNIGHT, KAREN HAYLEY, MICHELLE MADSEN, RACHEL ROSE REID and your host the General SALENA GODDEN with Major MAX DORAY! Plus live music from the kick ass talents of CLAIRE NICOLSON and also BCB heart throb ORLANDO SEALE Watch this page for updates and confirmations, they are coming in thick and fast...

Come join BCBoutique revellers and dance on the tables to DJ DAN CARRIER and his Dig It Sound System and drinky the best cocktails in town.

Happy Hour: 7pm - 11pm but we will rock you and lock you in until 3am!!!

Get there early though, its gonna be intimate and cosy, first come, first served, capacity is limited - Those who bring membership cards for either the El Camino Club or The Book Club Boutique will be ushered in by bouncers quickquicktime!

Have you have ever wanted a gig with BCB?
Please bring books or demos and we'll check them out - we get so many emails - but why not come, hang out, read us a poem, its more fun than doing the admin! And we promise not to bite! We are curating our 2012 series and always on the look out for more beautiful, brave soldiers with your weapons of mass inspiration.

If you cannot make it, we will miss you, you lovelies!

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas,

Well done to all for getting through such an 'eventful' year - to say the least!

We'll see you superstars in the glittering year that they'll call 2012!

love.life.live.long.alive-o
sgxxx

LOOK HERE FOR ADDITIONS TO BILL:

TIM WELLS, FRANCESCA BEARD, NATHAN PENLINGTON, NIALL O'SULLIVAN, MC ANGEL, POETCURIOUS, XAVIER LERET, AMAH-ROSE MCKNIGHT, KAREN HAYLEY, SIMON EGERTON, LISA LORE, JOE CAIRO, MICHELLE MADSEN, RACHEL ROSE REID and your host the General SALENA GODDEN with Major MAX DORAY! Plus live music from BCB heart throb ORLANDO SEALE and the kick ass talent of CLAIRE NICOLSON!!! Watch this page for updates and confirmations, they are coming in thick and fast...We missed you!

DECEMBER

2011-12-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

December

When I awoke that day I was acutely aware it was the first of December and I found myself dwelling in the date and its meaning. This willful route of thinking was destructive and against my better judgement. The more I tried to think of the present, the more I was pulled back to think of past Decembers and once I began, I caught myself recalling other significant festive seasons.

Just like everybody else, when I was a little girl, I’d open the first door of the advent calendar and begin the count down to Christmas. My belly would flutter with high expectations, like wishing for snow. As I walked to school I’d have brilliant hopes for colourful, shiny and sweet things. And like most children, on the first of December I’d begin to get over-excited for a thing that did not really exist, Santa Claus and Christmas magic. I have always felt Christmas always was all empty wrapping, broken promises and a cloying, claustrophobic sentimentality.

My father hung himself one December and as I grew up I became aware of an annual depression with each anniversary and with it a dreadful pressure, I felt Christmas was like an urgent deadline and an obligation I began to resent. Decembers darkness is constant, I can feel it now as I write this, December pressing down on me and pushing me into black. I find it hard to make light in December, no matter how many twinkly flashing bulbs you have in your windows, the darkest place is under the candle and that is where you’ll find me this time of year.

Lets go back, several Decembers ago, that was when I first moved into this place alone, I was running away from a great but destructive love. And these harboured memories sabotaged me. My brain played tricks on me with flashes of sentimental images. I became nostalgic, flooded with rosy memories of the painful affair and of a man I had once loved so very much. I found a photo of us then and now it was now, today, that first morning in December and it was all nagging at me. I threw on my old winter coat and went for a walk. And as I strolled down familiar streets of North London, I remembered other Decembers...

I distinctly remembered one crisp December day some years back, when I met a Madame, an ex-stripper and a lap-dancer. She ran a house of girls and private dancers. She wanted me to ghost-write her memoirs and we’d meet for coffees. It was a vanity project, she didn’t want it to be published or read by anyone. It was just for her, she said, it was for her kid to read one day. She was in her mid-thirties, she had hard boobs, straightened hair and long vinyl nails in a French manicure. In those days I was most often hungover, always hungry, I was even poorer back then, so I always hoped she would offer to buy lunch, maybe some soup, but it was always just coffee. We had a handful of meetings at this beautiful restaurant. It seemed beautiful because I was cold and empty. I would smell the fresh bread and eye the specials plat du jour chalked up on the board. While she talked, I’d be watching the waiters laying the white linen and polishing silverware. I asked her a great many questions to see if I could honestly write her life story with her voice. And she had a voice, with an accent that sang, she was from somewhere way up north. She’d repeat how she had some stories that would really make my toes curl. Without naming names she alluded to the fact she knew the dirt, sexy romps with MP’s and sensational filth on important, famous people. She’d known some real characters, she’d say over and over everybody has a book in them and this used to make me cringe. I’d sip the froth off my coffee, my belly grumbling, as my throbbing head would fill with scummy images of a sleazy underworld, desperate prostitutes, smack head strippers and slimy men with tattooed knuckles. I pictured rat-infested alleyways or pissy cobbled yards, steamed-up car windows, hand jobs and blow jobs. I’d imagine beige hotel rooms, needles and bruises, split lips and split skirts. We both agreed that to write her book I would have to go to the strip bars and sleaze dens she knew. I’d have to meet these shady characters, the real deal, the dark and the dangerous, the pimps and the whores, the devils and the angels.

She was talking to a lawyer to get a contract drawn-up between us. It was serious and she offered to pay me one thousand pounds. This was very cheap, one thousand pounds for eighty-thousand words, for a whole book, but I was sorely tempted. With that one thousand pounds I could pay my rent for December and I could buy my mother a Christmas present.

Fate stepped in and highly co-incidentally that very same week I met an eighteen year old Polish girl at a bar, her name was Candie, or at least that is what I called her. So after one of these coffees with the Madame, being in a dilemma, I called her to meet for a lunchtime pint. Candie was tiny and gritty, she had a pierced tongue, playing card tattoos and a slick bob of ice pink hair, the colour of candy-floss. I asked her if she knew of this Madame, she didn’t. Candie told me she charged five hundred pounds for one whole night in a hotel. She did the usual, rope work and bondage, role play and water sports. She spanked middle-aged men with their saggy arses. As we drank strong beer I laughed with her at these stories and some of the odd requests she got. I was titillated and ever so slightly tempted to go try that line of work – lets do the maths, for a weekend in a hotel room I would make more cash than writing the Madame’s book.

I once heard about a call-girl that got paid a a pretty penny just to make a Jew eat a bacon sandwich. She didn’t have to do anything else, she didn’t have to touch him or anything. She just had to dominate him in sexy underwear and then punish him by making him sit at her kitchen table and eat a bacon sandwich once a week. I reckoned I could do that and still be able to look myself in the eye the next day, still keep my soul, some integrity if you like, intact.

By dusk Candie had invited me to go on a job with her, in the name of research, to test drive if I had the stomach for the work and the writing. We had finished a good few strong Chimay beers on an empty stomach that afternoon and so it seemed like a good idea. It was dark as December always is, the pub was lit with Christmas lights. I drained my glass and got excited to go on an adventure with her.

The client that answered the door was dressed in a ballet tu-tu and ripped red fish-net stockings. He had a ragged beard, long greasy hair and John Lennon spectacles. He gave us vodka and stuff. He kept saying it was pure and he wasn’t lying. It was very strong indeed and you only needed a little, before your jaw locked up and your teeth started grinding and you got that shiny and overwhelming cocksure sense that you knew where everything was and what it was all about. In the name of research I went along with the ride and before I knew it I was quite enjoying myself, it was an intimate party and the client didn’t seem that weird or crazy. He told me he got turned on by piss and high heeled shoes. He took his time meticulously rolling the perfect cone, using scissors and a grass grinder, as he talked excitedly about drugs and sex and sitting there you know, it seemed all very compelling and urgent.

Then another man, also with a beard, showed up and for a horrible moment he began checking me out. I explained I was just a writer doing research for this Madame’s book. This raised an eyebrow and so I had to quickly convince him I wasn’t anything useful like a journalist, but just a poet. Luckily he liked poetry and started chopping out more powders and we settled into an excitable discussion about the ways to approach writing the Madame’s book.

It was then when it occurred to me that I could, I should write two books, one that was the Madame’s memoir written in her voice and past tense and the other in the present tense about being my life writing her book and meeting these dark shady people and writing the Madame’s memoir, like a Russian doll, a book inside a book. I would write her story and my story about writing the story. A little bit like this very short story you, you, you are reading…I I I would write write write about me, me, me writing about her whilst writing about me me me. Genius! A story inside a story insi I I I am a vibrating I am vibraaaating tingling black hole which makes my eyeballs hot and watch as my blood is sweet and itchy realising that last hit hit hit was what was that I I I see a fuzz of fizz and stars and sky dust glittering in a rocking boat floppy neck twitchy itchy fingers bendy bendy bending fizzing heavy head and stretchy legs of rubber and plasticine and pins and needles and pins and needle and pins and needles and pins and fizzing fizzing fizzy fuzzy was a bear, fuzzy wuzzy was bear was a bear was fuzzy was fizzy fuzzy was a bear was what it was a big brown bear and that is what was that was that a fuzzy a bum bum bum tiddly bum what was that fizzy fuzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…what was that about Russian dolls she is not Russian she is Polish. Candie is Polish! I affirmed out loud when the hallucinatory fuzz and black fizz finally cleared.

Candie went into the bathroom, she was calling out my name saying - Come and watch, he said you should come and watch, we both want you to come and see what I am doing! Quick now! But I didn’t go, I couldn’t stand up, besides I was far too interested in some sparkly dust in my thinking. I reckoned the noises I heard were enough. Then it went quiet in there. Then the noises started again and he was making a lot of noise, like he was getting something good. When he came back into the room, he made a song and dance about how pleased he was to have her urine in his beard and mouth and he licked and smacked his lips like a cat that got the cream whilst Candie purred.

It was a long and dark night, plenty of twitchy blood jumping, inane talk, a lively numbness, restless chatter. That negative sense of end of the world and a need to party like there’s no tomorrow, followed by a cold paranoid doom and a state of being trapped under frozen icy time. As I came back down to earth the daylight took weeks to break and it was unfriendly. Then The Fear spanked me around the back of the head like a cricket-bat and restful sleep was a long, long, long time coming.

When I came down I realised that I wasn’t going to take the job and write that book for the Madame. I knew that going there, really going there, the content of that writing and that journey would remain with me to this day. Like a blood stain and a cold shadow, something I would still feel later. There is enough darkness in the real world. Surely we must have all done some living by now and we have all had our own fair share of the secrets and shadows, of death and destruction. What people don’t know don’t harm them, when you write something down you live it and then you have to re-live it and walk through it again and again until it sticks in your guts. If you write anything like you really mean it - then it stays with you - writing tattoos your senses like a memory of a vivid dream, sharp as a truth and real as a scar.

And here’s the other truth, I would have got tired of writing the Madame’s story. I would have grown impatient with the work and got sick of writing for the money long gone and already spent. And the Madame, I imagine she would be setting dogs on me right now, she would be hunting me down to this day with a pack of those real characters, all with books inside them chasing me for an unfinished first draft.

Now, I come back to the present, here and now, the first of December and I find I am in the pub where I worked seven years ago. I’m drinking a gin and tonic and staring out at the pale lavender of the afternoon. I have spent the last few hours, drinking and thinking all of this, staring across the street and wondering if he still lives opposite. There, where we once lived together. I recall how happy I was there, living with him. I am getting up the courage to go and see him again. I have been hoping he’ll pop out to the corner shop for a pint of milk so I can watch him. It has been seven years and I know I am setting myself up. Nevertheless, I am compelled to face him, to just look into his eyes once more. This need is incessant, I am being selfish, I know I am, but the cogs started turning the other day when I found that photo of us. We were laughing and kissing eight, nine or ten years ago? I am chasing ghosts, intentionally poking skeletons. Most people get on with the present, most people go where the love is, most people let sleeping dogs lie. But, I am here watching my old home.

Suddenly and in one swift swig I drain my gin, take the risk and I cross the street and go into the building. I am afraid he will say bad things, remind me of how we hurt each other. Seven years ago I left him here, there, in distress with so much unresolved.

He is sick, skinny and smaller than I remember. We throw our arms around each other. He is hugging me and it is the closest I have been to another human for quite a long time. A laugh comes out of my throat from somewhere underneath. I kiss his cheek several times and cling onto him some more - and then just a little bit longer.

Then we sit outside and make roll ups, we smoke and talk, taking cautious but long looks at each others faces. We grin, snigger nervously. I can feel my eyes are as shiny, misted as his are. I surprise even myself to be sitting here. He says I haven’t changed a bit. I tell him about the photo I found of us back then. He tells me he is going into rehab. I cannot work out if my timing is way off or bang on. I wish him luck and I hope he gets clean at last. I begin to wonder if it was a sign finding that photo, a universal sense of the turning of a page that led me to this action, this consequence, this moment.

This is happening and this is in the present. Above us the stars are bright, the air is cold, it is the first night of this December, this year. But no it isn’t all better. I have frightened myself doing this, seeing this shadow again, visiting my past. I know I have had to come a long way to be able to come back here again. And there are things that are more familiar than I’d like to admit. He reminds me of someone I once was, of someone I am sure I am not anymore.

Some days pass, the fourth door is open on my advent calender when he calls me, we talk on the phone, he is in a car park, ten miles away from the rehab clinic in the countryside. He says he is having his last ever hit, a goodbye smoke. It’s a big moment for him, that he is choosing to speak to me also seems significant. We talk about being friends, maybe having dinner sometime when he gets out. He tells me he’d like to be my friend again but he’d feel sorry for anyone that went out with me. I laugh hollowly as though I agree, as though I see his point, as though I am a terrible person. Momentarily I agree, I forget I am in this present and I want to tell him I have changed, but I bite my tongue.

See you next year, he says, as he hangs up and we say goodbye. I really have no answers, I don't know why I had such a compulsion to go and find him or what I was ever doing there digging up the past. Maybe my timing was bang on but no, love, there is no Santa Claus or Christmas magic, it’s December, it’s dark, maybe this year, maybe next year, January? January is even darker but January at least is a fresh start.

'DECEMBER' WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ANTIQUE CHILDREN AND IS PART OF A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES YET TO BE PUBLISHED AS A WHOLE - BUT YOU CAN FIND MORE OF MY WORK PUBLISHED HERE:

SHORTFIRE PRESS: www.shortfirepress.com

PARAPHILIA MAGAZINE: www.paraphiliamagazine.com

TELLER MAGAZINE: www.tellermagazine.com

DWANG BOOKS: www.eatmytangerine.com

SIXTY-SIX BOOKS: http://oberonbooks.com/66-books.html

WWW.THEBOOKCLUBBOUTIQUE.COM

do you hear what i hear?

2011-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

http://thebookclubboutique.com

Out Now 'UNDER THE PIER' published by Nasty Little Press: www.nastylittlepress.org

Out Now: SIXTY-SIX Books: http://oberonbooks.com/66-books.html

Out Now: RACONTEUR: http://www.parthianbooks.com/content/raconteur-america

For quick updates twitter: @BookCBoutique or @salenagodden

Also check out these sites for more published work by Salena Godden:

www.shortfirepress.com

www.paraphiliamagazine.com

www.tellermagazine.com

www.eatmytangerine.com

UNDER THE PIER / DIBAWAH DERMAGA

2011-10-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

UNDER THE PIER / DIBAWAH DERMAGA

INDONESIAN TRANSLATION BY ALAN MALINGI

Under The Pier Dibawah Dermaga

Under the pier

I’d meet you here

on Saturday lunchtimes

in technicolours and rainbows.

Dibawah Dermaga

Dinsini kubertemu dirimu

Di hari sabtu saat makan siang

Pada warna dan pelangi

There were four of us that day

walking along Bottle Alley

I’d touch shards of saffron-coloured glass

pressed into the bleached concrete

and wonder what came in yellow bottles.

Hari itu kita berempat

Berjalan menyusari Bottle Alley

Aku menyentuh pecahan kaca warna kuning kunyit

Ditekan pada yang menggelantang

Dan bertanya botol kuning apa yang akan datang

Ceri balanced along the ledge

like a gymnast on a beam

her wild gold hair trapped

in the corners of her mouth.

Ceri berjalan keseimbangan di birai

Bagai persenam di balok titian

Rambut emasnya terjebak

Diujung mulutnya

Claire wore thick mascara

in turquoise and royal blue

her eyelashes were insects

bluebottles and beetles legs.

Claire memakai mascara tebul

Warna hijau kebiruan dan biru yang indah

Bulu matanja serangga

Lalat hijau dan kaki kumbang

Becky was tall and gangly

we talked about suicide.

We believed 1987

was gonna be just like 1967

Becky tinggi dan berkelompok

Kami berbicara tentang bunuh diri

Kami yakin tahun 1987

Akan menjadi seperti tahun 1967

as we swigged from the Thunderbirds red

fifty pence more expensive

than the blue

but we were all sick of Scrumpy.

Sambil kami menengguk minuman thunderbird merah

50 pence lebih mahal

Daripada yang biru

Tapi kami semua menikmatinya

The four of us sheltered there from

the rain and the boys and our parents.

It was our secret place

that nook and ledge,

Kami berempat berlindung disama dari

Hujan bersama anak anak kecil dan orang tua

Itu tempat rahasia kami

Tempat persembunyian dan birai itu

with our backs against the sea wall

our voices drowned out

by the crashing of waves

a wash of froth and brine

an echo of footsteps

across the soft rotting wood

of the boardwalk above us.

Dengan punggung yang membelakangi laut

Suara kami tenggelam

Oleh deburan ombak

Buih busa dan air asin

Pantulan suara langkah kaki

Melewati kayu rapuh yang lembut

Diatus papan untuk berjalan diatas kami

There were gaps between the planks

prisms of watery light

brown broken pipes emptied

in slurps of sewage.

Ada sela-sela diantara papan papan itu

Kilauan sinar air

Pipa coklat yang kosong

Dalam hirupan kotoran

Lightening flashed

between the rusty barnacled legs

of the dear old lady pier

and the magic mushrooms

made the sea all blood and ink.

Sinar berkilauan

Diantara kaki-kaki kijung yang berkarat

Di dermaga tua tersayang

Dan jamur yang mengagumkan

Membuat laut darah dan tinta

We shared ten B&H

bubble-gum lip gloss

smeared and slipped off the tip

and the lip of the bottle

and we sang Purple Rain

memorised the words like a prayer.

Kami berbagi 10 B&H

Permen karet pembasah bibir

Melumuri dan melepaskan ujung

Dan bibir botol

Lalu kami bernyanyi Purple Rain

Mengingat kata-kata layaknya pendoa

With a tiny crumb of hash

we huddled around the light

we cupped our hands

to make the spliff, right,

we were grounded

because we had lovebites

we were nearly fifteen

and we had catfights.

Dengan remah-remah kecil potongan daging dan kentang

Kami berkumpul mengelilingi cahaya/lampu

Kami menangkupkan tangan kami

Membentuk ganja, iya kan

Kami berbaring

Karena kami punya cinta

Kami hampir 15 tahun

Dan kami punya...

We swore to be best friends forever

that our children would play together

one for all and all for one

forever and ever…

Kami berjanji untuk berteman selamanya

Anak-anak kami akan bermain bersama

Satu untuk semua dan semua untuk satu

Selamanya

And as the storm died

the rain stopped and

God was a solitary shaft of sunlight

hitting the sea with a silver path to the horizon,

Dan saat badai berakhir

Hujan berhenti

Tuhan adalah sorotan matahari

Memukul laut melalui jalan menuju kaki langit

Under the pier

I’ll meet you

here.

Dibawah dermaga

Aku akan bertemu kamu

Disini.

UNDER THE PIER

PUBLISHED BY NASTY LITTLE PRESS

UBUD Writers & Readers Festival 2011

2011-10-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

UWRF 2011 / Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie in Bali

I’m typing this on the balcony of The Honeymoon Guesthouse: It overlooks a grassy sea of paddie fields. Above me there’s a swish of palm trees and the sun is setting, magenta, gently, whilst I sip an ice cold Bintang beer. As I write this, my sense of smell is invaded by frangipani, incense wafts from temple blessings and the moon is gonna rise high and full tonight.

This morning I was up at dawn, first light, I exhaled, inhaled this natural beauty, like I was some Eat.Love.Pray moron. I drank black tea and started writing poetry, meditating on the beauty of nature, inner peace and my tranquil surroundings. Imagine, there I was counting my blessings, admiring the creatures of the dawn, when I was attacked by a giant electric-blue-black butterfly. I jumped up and ran screaming like an idiot through the garden, shouting “fuckers going for my face….” So no, when you come here you do not become suddenly enlightened, however, I must admit, you cannot help but feel the world turning just a little more gently, a slow and steady pace.

Of all the literary gatherings I have been to, this has to be the friendliest and also the broadest in terms of cultures and far flung nations. I have enjoyed performing at Crossing Borders, Hay-On-Wye, Electric Picnic and Port Eliot etc...I fondly remember all of these wicked events – And so Ubud writers and Readers Festival its like that, but placed among paddie fields in a village, a small arts town called Ubud in Bali.

This is a lush country: We are in the colourful coconut life, your bikini is damp in your bag with your signed books, your sunglasses are glued to your face. When you are not hot-footing it or on bikes to different venues for lively debates, readings and talks, you’ll spend your free hours in cafes, roadside shack BBQ’s and ornate gardens, talking books, books, books all day and all night. This is the place to meet writers from the four corners of the world, to share ideas and to get inspired. Theres a fizz of exchange, feedback, advice, publisher tips, a hullabaloo of creativity and a lot of laughs too. You’ll quit giving out business cards and just swap books instead. Here we have the greatest minds of this generation in flip flops and sarongs, sucking noodles and Mango Daiquiries, or meandering through paddie fields and taking a breather.

Denpasar airport was a buzzing 1950’s retro arrival lounge with hustlers and tourists queuing for visas. There was an ominously clear sign stating that the death penalty is enforced here. The drive to Ubud was long, thick with traffic, a million mopeds and bicycles, a raucous ringing of bells and car horns. I felt like I’d been in the sky for a week to get here, stopping over at Singapore and Perth contributed to the arrival here taking on a dreamy quality, slipping out of my London manic reality into this heat, this vivid paradise.

I stayed at The Pita Maha Hotel for the first five nights. It is perfect for a honeymooning couple sure, but also great for a writer that rises with the dawn everyday to write, watch sunrise and freak herself out with face-eating butterflies. Once settled and unpacked, my first mission was to track down the genius behind this festival and thank her, for her great big heart and generosity, the awe inspiring Janet De Neefe. After months of emails and organisation I had to find her to thank her: THANK YOU. What a beautiful soul, its her warmth and energy in the centre of this event that made this all come together and with so much style and grace too. We all love her, and its easy to love her right away, she’s the real deal. She’s a woman of so many talents, author, restauranteur, business woman, teacher, wife and mother of four beautiful children, a community spirited super woman, not just the local community but the global community of books and writers too, creating a platform for Asian and Western writers and poets to meet. I noted that whenever I mentioned the name, Janet, albeit to taxi drivers or tender bar boys, they’d smile and say “Oh Janet, she’s good woman, all she done, for Bali, for Bali and especially, all she do for Ubud, good woman…”

In fact all of the organisers, volunteers and staff were brilliant, helpful, kind, Jeni Caffin and Jane Fuller too. To paraphrase David Attenborough he said that in Ubud you will find “...the most talented and friendliest people on Planet Earth.” And so its not just me that's picking up on this, he also said Bali is the most beautiful of all places too, and that's our favourite British broadcaster and naturalist, Sir Attenborough, so its not just me going soft and gooey here...

For my first gig I was asked to speak at a press conference. I was nervous and when asked how I found Ubud and the festival I wanted to say something like this:

Literary festivals are integral for authors to meet to exchange ideas, to cross borders and share this documentary we are all writing, of this life and of our time. We are living in exciting times. Some of the writers on the bill here are old friends of mine and others I have read and admired or follow via facebook or twitter. Its brilliant to finally meet these people and hear them speak. We may all come from different countries but we are all telling our version of the story, all with our own language and experience, but all sharing one key love and that’s the writing and that’s the books.

I’m not sure if I got even a fraction of that point across though, I got shy and I was sitting next to the brilliant and twinkly smile of Indonesian novelist Andrea Hirata.

Opening Night: Traditional Dance at The Palace

Natural Beauty is Bali..

Paddie Fields

That first evening there was an opening ceremony at the Palace. Traditional Balinese dancers, intricate costumes in gold, dazzling music and drama. There was a ceremony of thanks and praise, blessings and joy and this was followed by a dinner at Casa Luna. I lucked out and got a seat next to Australian poet Alicia Sometimes, a Melbourne poet I’ve known for over a decade and yet have not seen face to face for ten years, so you can imagine there was a lot of catching up to do. Alicia and I met when she published me when she was co-editing ‘Going Down Swinging’ back in my early ‘Saltpetre’ SaltPeter and Resonance FM days. We used to send packages to and fro overseas and play each others spoken word compilations on our respective radio shows back then…already that’s ten years ago…where are the years going my friends? Now Alicia is a broadcaster on national Australian Radio Station 3RRR and her highly-regarded literary show is called Aural Text. Also on our table I met SeanWhelan for the first time, and what a diamond poet he is too. Terrific writer, a warm Brautigan feel to his work, and a great laugh to have midnight swims and gins with too. I was so glad when I discovered nearly all of my shows and panel debates were alongside these superstars from down under Alicia Sometimes, Sean Whelan and also the brilliant Australian writer GeoffLemon too. Google them after you read this…

I was quite drawn to introduce myself to the great Arthur Flowers, there was a big magnetic pull in the room, like there was this giant of a soul in the room. I was convinced I had met him before. Arthur Flowers is a Vietnam veteran, Memphis blues dude and a contemporary griot. You must check out his book, an extraordinary jam session of Patua art and masterful story telling. I read it in one greedy gulp, give this book to your children, but after you read it first of course ‘I See A Promised Land - The Life Of Martin Luther King’ - illuminating, a pure delight of a book.

I also clocked another favourite of mine, Chris Abani. Chris and I were published in anthologies together back in the mid-1990’s, but more recently I’ve been thrilled to check out his TED talks. Amazing to run into that great soul again too.

So festivals, of course, you try to catch as many talks, panel debates and readings as you can - I had two or three missions or gigs a day and so missed many that I had ear-marked in my programme. Although I heard people buzzing in the bars having met or heard the likes of Alexander McCall Smith, Aneesha Capur, Benjamen Law, Gregory Day, Jaya Savage, Kunal Basu, Iain Bamforth, Meg Mundell, MohezinTejani, Oleg Borushko, Rudolf Dethu to name just a few…

The wonderful Alicia Sometimes

Australian Poet and event producer Sean Whelan

Griot Arthur Flowers...

The Cambodian Space Project

Another massive highlight for me was meeting and performing with The Cambodian Space Project they blew me away with an awesome version of ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’ sang in Cambodian. This was followed by an original song titled ‘Broken Flower’ which is sublime, a real tear jerker. The Cambodian history and life story is interweaved into this shockingly beautiful music. We played two shows together, one out in Denpasar at Antida and one was in the middle of a lotus lake, all flowers and fairy lights. That night there was a soft warm rain shower, beautiful children singing, they were angels in gold.

Its a thrill to travel and to be able to perform to new audiences, to crowds who perhaps do not have English as a first language too. To perform long forgotten songs and poems, for they may be old to me, but they are new to new people who have never heard my work before and I do have over two or three decades of poems now - I did the maths and I have been doing this longer than I have not. It’s a freedom and a celebration to showcase all your old favourites as well as try out new work too as a response to the other authors in your session. An example of this and a great inspiration for me was performing alongside MarcelaRomero a spanish speaking story-teller. We were on a panel discussing performance, page v's stage, and even though I do not speak Spanish, her delivery was totally universal, her smile, her pauses, spoke volumes, and in every and any language, her work came from her heart. And this reminds me of this:

The theme of this years festival was Nandurin Karang Awak – Cultivate the Land Within. The theme is inspired by a line in Gaguritan Salampah Laku, a long poem in traditional metres. It was composed by Bali’s greatest Kawi-Wiku (poet-priest) Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen. In one part of the Geguritan, Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen says,”…idep beline mangkin, makinkin mayasa lacur, tong ngelah karang sawah, karang awake tandurin…” (My intention now, pursuing the life of simplicity, [since I] don’t have any rice field, [I shall] cultivate the land within myself).

My next mission was to host a lunch ‘in conversation’ with Booker Prize winning author DBCPierre at the sensational Four Seasons Hotel. A stunning establishment, with the wow factor and a lake of lotus, lilies on the roof. I haven’t hosted a literary lunch before, but how difficult can it be to have a chat, drink wine and have a laugh with one of the most infectiously mischievous writers I have ever had the joy to meet. Pierre has a smoky, gravel voice, a quick mind, an infectious laugh and many a great long yarn to spin. I saw him a month ago at the terrific Voewood Festival in picturesque Norfolk and now we’re here together in Bali, quite a lovely coincidence and a happy collision.

Jeni Caffin, Janet De Neefe & DBC Pierre

“Old punks never die, they become writers.” Paul Kelly said in his talk at the festival about his book How To Make Gravy. Now between you and me, back in London, I’ve been glued to youtube clips of PaulKelly and Kev Carmoody. I love his work and was overjoyed to be asked to support him at a Mudra Swari Saraswati Foundation fundraising event at a new venue in Ubud called Betel Nut. Truth be told, I’m not sure that Paul Kelly fans liked being told to Imagine If You Had To Lick It. My gig however was saved by being joined on stage by Jakarta-born singer Kartika Jahja, we collaborated together on a rendition of a piece of prose about London’s homeless titled Dead Drunk. Afterwards she told the audience she is a boxer and sang a heart-stopping bluesy version of my Boxing Poem.

When Paul Kelly took to the stage the venue was packed and cheering, rammed with fans. He was joined on stage by clarinet played beautifully by Sian Prior and also the wicked blues dude Lucky Oceans. Like a love-sick fan I wrote him a one minute poem, an Ode to Paul Kelly, and read it to the crowd after the fundraiser auction for laughs. Paul was very kind, he said he liked my poem, he asked me to sign it and give it to him. Paul Kelly is a gentle soul, to shake hands with him you meet a man with soft edges and a big heart. I was lead to believe this by following his lyrics and music and was moved to finally meet him.

Paul Kelly

That next day was a Sunday and I was off-duty and found myself kidnapped by the young volunteers, Australian university literary students from the Gold Coast. We had a laugh drinking Bintang beers. We also got into a deep discussion, a private Q&A, by their pool on the life of being a writer. I recall us discussing the work of Brett Easton Ellis V’s Hubert Selby Junior and pondering the hole in the market for gritty female erotica, not Anais Nin pillow fights or chick lit fluff. Following the lazy afternoon on Bintang, we partied well into the small hours…cheeky monkeys.

And the next day I remember giggling through the sacred monkey forest with Australian comedienne and author Corrine Grant and writers ClementineFord and DBC Pierre. I remember laughing as we did impersonations of the lion from the Wizard of Oz “If only I had more courage!” “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto” As a pink German tourist got set upon by a crew of hardcore gangster monkeys from the projects. The monkeys, truthfully, I thought they were pretty scary, really they were, wicked sharp teeth and claws, I reckon they were trained to bite, nick sunglasses and cameras from gaping mouthed tourists. But then I was running away from butterflies so what do I know?

My stay here has been one laugh after another, but I have also found some breathing time and peace, it is an illuminating culture and nourishing to get away from the city. I know there is so much to learn and am sure I have made many faux pas. For example: you must always take your shoes off when you enter a home, you must never show the sole of your foot, and as well as please and thank you, it helps if you learn to say this - sing ken ken – no problem. I must stop gushing, but its difficult not to fall in love in these heavenly surroundings. The people of Ubud are the most friendly and peaceful and its catching after a while. I suggest you read Janet De Neefe's 'Fragrant Rice' before coming here, its got some excellent tips for local culture and protocol. She also mentions the best places to eat and explore in and around Ubud. Janet stepped off the plane in Bali in 1974 and never looked back, falling in love with the culture, the landscape and the mouth-watering cuisine. She later married the wonderful Ketut Suardana here. In this delightful memoir Janet offers insights into the ancient myths and rituals you will witness while you are here. Fragrant Rice is published by Periplus.

Janet De Neefe at the opening ceremony

Alicia Sometimes and Steve Grimwade, director of the Melbourne Writers Festival

During this trip I also flew to Bima, a small Island in Indonesia for a satellite gig in collaboration with the main UWRF event. Bima was another world altogether, hotter and drier and less advanced than Bali. There I read and met with students from the college, writers and poets of Bima and the Minister of Culture, all hosted by the wonderful local poet Alan Malingi.

I was taken to the Palace of the Sultan, in glass boxes there were gilt ornate swords, gold and silver betel-nut pot and spittoons, all belonging to the former Sultan and all his elders. Bima might be off the map for Westerners now, but it has much to offer, mountains and wide empty beaches. I can imagine tourism blossoming there over the next decade, so if you want to get off the beaten track I suggest you go now before its changed too much. I felt like an alien, sticking out like a sore thumb in a Muslim country, but the welcome was very warm and hospitality so kind. That night the students put on a performance, music, song, dance and theatre. Afterwards we jammed a song about Bima and they tried to teach me to dance, all under the biggest starry skies.

Bima students, writers and beaches

Bima: Special thanks to Kadek Punami and Alan Malingi above & Bima students below

So, once the festival is all over and the writers have gone back to their respective writing garrets, if you are lucky, like me, you can stay to explore Bali a little. I have never been to Bali, so I organised to stay on alone to write and explore. You might want to seek out the Balinese massages and health spas or take up yoga if you are that way inclined. For the more adventurous there's hiking and cycling up mountains, volcano walks plus water sports, scuba diving and white water rafting. I enjoyed drinking a pina colada and meeting an elephant. What a wonderful experience to ride at a lolling pace at such a lofty height through the jungle. I’d love to take an elephant home and ride it to the pub...

Local Ubud art and artists are astonishing too, stunning sculpture and paintings, batik and jewellery, its well worth taking time to visit one of the very many art galleries and the temples too. While I have been here I’ve been making Bali style Book Club Boutique gigs in Bar Luna reading stories and poems and improvising with local Indonesian musicians. What a lovely idea - Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie in Bali – maybe next year we’ll bring the whole BCB crew, now wouldn’t that be wonderful. In fact after posting this missive, my next mission is to make a hit list of poets and writers, gather troops for UBUD 2012, who's coming?

Janet De Neefe, author and festival producer and business woman. And I discovered she also teaches Balinese cooking classes here in Honeymoon Guesthouse As I write this I can eavesdrop from here on my balcony and hear recipes, you need chilli, lime leaves, coconut…and…Oh you’ll have to come find out for yourself.

Buy your ticket to UBUD 2012 NOW and I’ll meet you here! We’ll see the sights, hear ground-breaking talks, inspiring sessions, an array of story telling, poetry and book readings. We’ll walk up into the paddie fields, sit at Sari Organik, eat beautiful food, watch the cool ocean of green, listen to the swish of rice growing, sip mango daiquiris, take moonlit midnight skinny dips…And don’t forget that after Ubud festival you’ll need to buy an extra suitcase for all the books you’ll want to take home!

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everybody at UBUD 2011!

NANDURIN KARANG AWAK : CULTIVATE THE LAND WITHIN

Janet De Neefe, DBC Pierre, Corrine Grant

Australian writer Clementine Ford

First light driving through Bali and splashing with elephants

Paul Kelly, Sian Prior, DBC Pierre, Sean Whelan...

Indonesia from the sky

Jeni Caffin

Lots of laughs and masks...

Students of Bima and Alan Malingi

What was Michael Jackson doing there?

With the lovely Sian Prior

SOME BOOKS IN MY SPARE UBUD SUITCASE!

Fragrant Rice by Janet De Neefe

Lights Out In Wonderland By DBC Pierre

Soundtrack By Alicia Sometimes

The Rainbow Troops By Andrea Hirata

I See A Promised Land by Arthur Flowers

Odd Poems And Slogans by John O’Sullivan

Lessons In Letting Go: Confessions of a Hoarder by Corrine Grant

Indonesia Bermimpi by Sean Whelan

NANDURIN KARANG AWAK / A Bilingual Anthology of Indonesian Writing

"A Valentine At Waterloo" - Meet us in Soho in 2058

2011-08-21T04:44:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: September 2nd 2011 

We got 'Pick Of The Week' BBC R4 - Ian McMillan reviews 'A Valentine at Waterloo' and gave 'Verse Illustrated' a big thumbs up! Very complimentary about the work and David Sedaris too.  

Found the link, plays clip at about 5 mins in... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qpdd

A VALENTINE AT WATERLOO on VERSE ILLUSTRATED

Listen: Wednesday, 23:00 on BBC RADIO 4 & Podcast FREE thereafter

In the third of the new series of illustrated poems, get in your time machines and set your GPS Sat Nav for Sohemia, The French House on the Old Compton Street River in 2058.

'A Valentine at Waterloo' written and performed by Salena Godden
An Orwellian post-apocalyptic vision of our sexual and hedonist future:

"The best show in England-Town, they have real flying femen, ladybirds and buttflies, cock-a-tails and flickbeans, hermaids and mermaids, 8-breasted gooligans, whippers, flippers and strippers-to-go-go, the finest black market moon juice in the whole of downtown Soho..."

Then you'll be transported presently and safely back to 2011 with 'A Hell of a Week' written and performed by the wonderful Scroobius Pip. This should be 'one of the biggest solo spoken word shows ever to be recorded', exclusively for Radio 4. But where exactly is Scroobius Pip...?

Actors: Carl Prekopp, Peter Polycarpou and Jonathan Forbes.

Directed by James Robinson.

website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013fj5t

podcast link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/vi

scroobius pip: http://scroobiuspip.co.uk/

salena godden: www.thebookclubboutique.com

MAE WEST: Come up and see me sometime...

2011-08-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Aug 17th 2011 - Mae would have been 118 years old today

MAE WEST: “If you can’t go straight, you’ve got to go around”

She was a fast moving woman

who liked to take it slow,

it was not the men in her life

but the life in her men.

When she landed in London

they asked Ms West “How do you like Big Ben?”

She said she was disappointed

he was just a clock.

Her problem was never how much sex she had

but how much she could get away with -

submitting hot scripts loaded with lines she knew would be cut

she’d save the real script until shooting or first night and then

watch the studio managers, theatre bosses go white with fear

but change their minds quick when the queues grew and tickets sold out.

She was the first woman to dance the shimmy live on stage

a provocative move she picked up in late night clubs, speakeasys and ghettos

cohorting with poor white trash and coloured folk.

And when Duke or Louis played - they really played

she wouldn’t allow Hollywood bosses to pay white guys to mime

their tunes to camera.

Her lifes work was a revolt against censorship

whipping up a frenzy in red neck bible belts

challenging moralising bigots.

She wrote scandalous scripts

a black man kissing a white woman

and also a gay kiss.

She spent her life on the road and touring

whilst writing plays, books and live shows,

She was born in the 1890’s

and didn’t get to the silver screen and Hollywood

or become a real household name

until she was over 40 years old.

She once booked a cast of down and out homeless bums

she gave them shelter and paid work

whilst creating an authentic Harlem ghetto on stage

and it was a sell-out show.

She dated fit boxers and sportsmen,

perhaps because they could keep up with her stamina.

She had a voracious sexual appetite

fuelling gossip she must be hermaphrodite

but she was one hundred per cent woman.

She enjoyed sex,

but like an athlete in training

she abstained when she was working.

She believed in sexual freedom

but never screamed off the rooftops

rather whispered to one man at a time.

And goodness has nothing to do with it,

there are no good girls gone wrong

just bad girls found out.

She reduced Cary Grant to a whimper,

when her male co-star reached to hold her hand

she said through smoldering eyes

“It aint heavy I can carry it for myself.”

They used to call me Saliva

as in spit

the stuff you use to polish a thing

when you are all out of elbow grease,

Well, whoever said

there is a book inside everybody

was inside a body

at the time.

So,

peel me a grape

you can be had

The only difference

between you and me, honey

is you can afford to give it away.

Throw discretion to the wind

and your hips to the north,

south, east and west.

There’s not a dry seat in the house

for the legendary

Mae West.

Poem first published:

Issue 23 / THE ILLUSTRATED APE MAGAZINE: www.theillustratedape.com

MAE WEST: 'I'M NO ANGEL" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrfHXnUJFc

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Keep fighting the good fight

2011-08-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

he's alive and well in pedragelejo

i know he'll act cool like
he hasn't heard of him
if i approach his table
he'll pretend he
doesn't understand

its highly likely he refuses
to speak English anymore
or sign autographs
and i really should factor in
he may hate poetry and poets
recognising him

but he looks well
he looks brighter
than the other old boys
playing dominoes
gutsy and strong and silent
he drinks plenty of beer
chain smokes cigarettes

he stands out with
that defiant air of bravado
a cocksure arrogance
like i bet he has a good one
swinging and throbbing
in his brown baggy pants

i was drawn to
the mole on his cheek
and the grey, greasy hair
bushy knotted eyebrows
creased forehead
that pot belly in a sports shirt
a sure give away

i order a bottle of wine
my spanish is terrible
the English laugh
at my pronounciation
the make of wine is
bocadero or bocadillo
but i just ordered
a bottle of bread

but its then
i decide he dosen't just
look like him
in fact it is him
the 1970's version
the spit of the
black and white photo
from the cover of
ham on rye
or factotum
i forget which as

i sit on my hands
fighting a raging
compulsion
to go sit on his lap
and play with the hairs
sprouting out of his ears

i want to tweek
his purple
bulbous
nose

any minute now
i will call out the names
charles? hank? buk? chinaski?
and if he looks up
if he smiles at me
even once

i am gonna get up
walk over there
cup my hands
about his head
and kiss his
lovely craggy
face.

©2010. Salena Godden

"Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is." Charles Bukowski

Today would have been Charles Bukowski's 91st Birthday!

Tweet with hashtag #Bukowski follow @bukquotes
Check out great piece in Sabbotage Times:
http://www.sabotagetimes.com/people/happy-birthday-charles-bukowski-the-greatest-writer-who-ever-lived/

Something For the Touts, the Nuns, the Grocery Clerks & You by Charles Bukowski - Poems and Insults: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A42I6u6gtjc

Tom Waits reads Bukowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1t6a0zCkQ

LONDON RIOTS

2011-08-09T04:28:00.000-07:00

"If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the consequences."
said Cameron returning from holiday to speak for the first time on the London riots today.

London Riots

i didn't want to open my curtains this morning
to see black smoke and a charred city
broken glass and blood-stained pavements
burned-out buses and bins
to hear helicopters like wasps this August.

i didn't want to open my lap top this morning
to read misinformation and ill-informed twats,
fear spread thick like soft butter on burnt toast
ignorance the sticky bitter marmalade on top.

I didn't want to open newspapers this morning
revealing pictures of a war-zone that I call my London,
the stupidity of violence and the daily hate.

I didn't want to open my attachments this morning
to see such vile footage -
a victim being robbed, whilst bleeding on the road
they pretended to help him, whilst going through his backpack
appauling.

But, I did want to open my eyes to see
that London spirit rising this morning,
some gallows humour
but a sense of mucking in
communities gathering.

I hope these events open a forum for honest debate
I do believe that truth will out.

And we all know that the real criminality is ongoing
in the bad neighbourhood's
of Downing Street and Parliament
and the buck stops there.

It took less than 8hrs for the general public to organise a clean-up operation,
Yet it took 4 days for the Prime Minister of this country to utter one word.
The emergency teams, fire brigade, ambulance, these are our heroes.
The Turkish shopkeepers protecting Dalston...brilliant.

And if this was a movie something really good happens next:
a celestial ray of light,
a moment of still clarity,
the cogs of change turn,
from the dark one voice of reason..

Don't feed fear and spread ignorance.
Peace is the way and the solution.
We lead by shining example,
Spread the word,
the word is love

and i love London

(c) Salena Godden. 2011.

Some positivity / helpful links:

http://www.riotcleanup.com/ - http://catchalooter.tumblr.com/ - http://londonrioters.co.uk/ #riotcleanup #riotwombles

If you're disabled & close to riot areas pls use #disabledriothelp for emotional support from other tweeps

You can help!#riotcleanup #londonriots
by donating bedding / clothes to Apex House, 820 Seven Sisters Road, London N15 5PQ.

http://www.londononline.co.uk/local/Communications_and_Networking/Helplines/

FRAN, AMY, CHERYL And All That Jazz...

2011-07-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

Fran, Amy, Cheryl And All That Jazz…

I’d like to tell you a story about three female performers that kicked ass.

I’d like to tell you about three ladies that had pepper and spice and didn’t always play nice. Three female artists that have just left us for the great gig in the sky: Fran Landesman, Cheryl Burke and Amy Winehouse, our three Graces, just add a few of my favourite things: jazz. poetry. hedonism. sex. guts. humour. Be it London or New York, these were trail blazers, each in their own time and their own wicked way. And don’t we love our female leads to have fire, spirit and kick? These women did not mince their words. During their lifetimes they influenced and inspired both love and envy. People copied them, loved them, wanted to be them and they were each known to be more than a little feisty or visceral, on or off stage.

“Funny business a woman’s career, so many things you drop on your way up the ladder just so you can move faster, you forget you may need them again, when you get back to being a woman. One career all women have in common, whether they like it or not, being a woman, sooner or later, we have to work at it, no matter how many other careers we’ve wanted.” Bette Davies - All About Eve

Each at very different stages of their careers and the career of being a woman, and it is this and the sorrow and loss I feel today, that drives me to speak up and write this. I’m not writing about feminism here, but the truth is IT is different for girls and different for boys. I will even stick my neck out and say I really do believe its a harder crowd and a higher tightrope for the female artist, harder to please everyone and further to fall.

I want to thank these three women for all they brought to the table. Thank them for being bothered, for not just talking about it, but doing it. For kick starting more than a few conversations, for raising the bar, empowering and inspiring so many people. We just lost not one, not two, but three really good ones, class acts: Jazz poet and songwriter Fran Landesman, New York poet and author Cheryl B and of course the brilliant R&B jazz singer Amy Winehouse. We lost all three, here and now, all gone, three very different women, but at three stages of the career of being a woman, also split by three defining decades:- Born in 1927 Fran Landesman was very much part of the swinging sixties, my friend and peer Cheryl B was born in the hazy seventies and Amy Winehouse born in the eighties.

All three were no stranger to controversy, obviously Amy, but before her Fran advocated free love and in 1984 Fran appeared in a BBC documentary about open marriages called The Infernal Triangle. On another occasion the BBC received complaints after Fran appeared on Desert Island Discs, requesting a supply of cannabis seeds as her luxury item. Cheryl was active and vocal in the New York gay community, she was often shocking, outspoken about lesbian sexuality and also brutally honest about the battle to get sober, more to the point her good reasons to get sober. Drugs, alcohol and all that jazz…I’d rather focus on the output than the intake, focus on what somebody gives rather than what somebody might have taken. Creativity can be obsessive, addictive, and it can be lonely and isolating too

Step into their shoes: Imagine how it feels to silence a room with the opening line of a beautiful song; Or how wonderful it is to deliberately make an audience gasp, cheer or laugh…applause….and now picture the flip side, how harsh a so-so gig can be. How crushing it is to misjudge it. There are sacrifices all artists makes along the way. You need armour and protection. This living can be hazardous, this path is harsh, jagged with rejections, criticisms, jealousies and knock backs, highs and lows. Success isn’t comfortable, popularity is a prickly seat and luck is fleeting – And the business of going about this business a lady, well, that’s an art in itself.

Have you ever heard of Little Miss Cornshucks? She was a hellraiser, back in the 1940’s she originally wrote and performed ‘Try a little Tenderness’. The original lyrics went more like this “I may be weary, women do get weary, wearing the same old shabby dress, but while I’m weary, try a little tenderness…” She shocked polite society by ripping her wig off and throwing it across the crowded room at record company executives. And tragically she died penniless and in obscurity. And who doesn’t smirk at the tale of Nina Simone aiming a gun at her manager in a busy diner to ask nicely, for the last fucking time, for her royalty cheque? The true meaning of the word Diva is so misinterpreted, it has nothing to do with entourage or blue m&m’s in your dressing room.

We must never underestimate the pressure, the discipline and hard work it takes to get good at something and the concentration it takes to maintain that one thing, how to do it like you mean it, with all your balls, until it takes all your balls. This woman’s work is never done and its all eggs and balls…its like spinning plates whilst juggling eggs…keeping your eye on the ball…keeping the ball in the air…you got to break shells to make omelettes….the goal posts move…balls…bouncing way out of the ball park.

•••

I met Fran Landesman when I first moved to London in the early 1990’s with grand plans to be both a writer and a musician. I remember those early Apples and Snakes gigs and the first time I saw Fran perform, with lyrics like “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” what wasn’t to admire? She was a firecracker. Back in the sixties archives you’ll see she was often the only girl on the male-dominated circuit featuring alongside the likes of the Liverpool poets. She was also a big part of hippy happenings - from Greenwich Village to Bohemian Soho –she probably hung out with the likes Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Burroughs, to name just a few of the reasons I felt I should salute her when we met.

In 1999 we recorded the first ever Saltpetre CD, an audio-magazine, produced by the brilliant composer Peter Coyte. The CD was an aural collage of live performance and studio recordings by poets such as John Cooper Clarke, Jock Scot, Tim Turnbull, John Siddique, Martin Newell, Francesca Beard, Cheryl B, Tim Wells and of course Fran Landesman – Fran’s track was titled ‘Bustin’ Our Arses Gratis’ - The CD's proved difficult to place in shops but The SaltPetre Radio show developed into a free-for-all weekly radio show for almost four years at Resonance FM.

Fran Landesman died peacefully at home last Saturday, July 23rd 2011, she was 83.

•••

I briefly met Amy Winehouse in and around 2003. Peter Coyte and I were riding a wave with our band SaltPeter, we had a number one in the dance charts with a remix of 5AM by Different Gear: A song with lyrics boasting the merits of all-night benders in Soho and booze black outs. I was also co-hosting a weekly Channel 4 chat show - Heavy TV - with Normski, Antonia Windsor, Antonio Marrese, Dotun Adebayo... among others. Initially my role was to be the weekly bard, to write a topical poem for each show, but the poetry slot was axed, as is so often the case, I’m sorry to say, poetry is still the poor and misunderstood cousin at the wedding of entertainment.

However every week there was a performance by an up-and-coming star and one week it was a very young and self-assured Amy. She was charming and when she sang needless to say it was breathtaking. Back then my friends and I often spent lost afternoons in Camden – magic mushrooms were for sale on the market stalls then – and we’d idle the time away, drinking pints in the Lock Tavern, The Hawley Arms, but more so The Good Mixer because it had a pool table. There was a buzz about a girl called Amy, a Camden whipper-snapper, I remember a tiny tattooed girl with big hair, ballet shoes, black eyeliner, a fag hanging from her lips, as she pots the black.

One afternoon the Mixer when was quiet, it was mostly just girls in there, drinking pints of lager, hair of the dog, we had a banter about having a big night the night before, we laughed. Everything was very hazy, laughs came easy, the pool balls clicked and clacked, the smoke and the fizz, it was a good feeling, like bunking off school. It was one of those random afternoons you cannot repeat, but you bank it, you think be nice to run into her again…she’s a good laugh…you think you will…you know what I mean?

Last Saturday, June 23^rd 2011, Amy Winehouse was found dead at her London home, she was 27.

•••

REMEMBERING CHERYL

It’s your red lipstick I’ll remember first,

and how I thought of you as my own Dorothy Parker,

with your acerbic Manhattan wit

and brutal honesty.

Your heart spilled and silenced a room,

your eyes were two black orchids in smooth pale moonlight,

but your mouth was scarlet and dark as the words that hooked us, quick, smart.

your writing always made me wish,

that people were more kind.

so it goes like this…

We met in 1995 or ’96 with Tim Wells,

Mr Tim connected us all:

The Heart of Darkness crew

Rising and rising, you rose and rose

But who can remember that first gig?

was it in Chalk Farm with Lyallsy?

perhaps with Tim Turnbull or Francesca Beard?

Ivan Penaluna? Paul Birtill?

It is for sure we would have gone to the Marathon for afters,

chips and beers and Johnny Cash.

Years later, there was dirty snow along the Bowery

We did CBGB’s and Steve Cannon’s Tribes Gallery

We demolished jugs of frozen margheritas with Aimee Bianca

in a place with a name like Mexican Hat.

I see us skidding on icy Brooklyn sidewalks,

sucking beer up from polystyrene cups at The Green Point Tavern.

Remember 2001 and the Cornelia Street Café

you were right, Cheryl, poetry is full of mad people.

But that was the summer the world went mad

we had ring side seats to witness 9/11

and things haven’t ever been sane since.

Five years have passed since we last met

with Adele Stripe and the crew near Waterloo,

You were a non-drinker by then

but you winked and tipped me a knowing smile.

Now you have gone too young and too soon

poets are still mad

focussed on prizes and celebrity

instead of guts and truth

You were a pearl

and it feels like the world is running out of grit

there is gonna be just a clatter of empty oyster shells

without you, my friend.

On Saturday June 18th 2011, Cheryl Burke (Cheryl B.) died of complications from chemotherapy treatment she had been receiving for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, she was 38.

•••

Cheryl B: "Why couldn't Sylvia Plath have been licking my clit that night on route 35?"

Amy Winehouse: “What kind of fuckery is this?”

Fran Landesman: “On the way to the stars, everybody has scars.”

•••

FURTHER READING & LINKS:

Fran Landesman was the poet laureate of lovers and losers: her songs are the secret diaries of the desperate and the decadent. No one could convey the bitter-sweet joys of melancholy or the exhilaration of living on the edge like Fran. The jazz world's answer to Dorothy Parker, New York born lyricist Fran Landesman's acid wit and penetrating insights first emerged in her 1950s collaborations with composer Tommy Wolf. Songs such as “Spring Can Hang You Up The Most” and “The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” soon became standards boasting recordings by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Bette Midler.

read more here: website: http://www.franlandesman.com/

Cheryl Burke (known as Cheryl B in the community) was a poet, writer, editor, and organizer who burst out on the slam poet circuit back in the 90s at the Nuyorican Poets Café. More recently she was the organizer of the raucous NY reading series, Sideshow: A Queer Literary Carnival, with Sinclair Sexsmith and was at work on a memoir about her life. Her poetry has been widely-published and anthologized in volumes like Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (Seal Press, 2007), Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (Alyson Books), and others. Cheryl's work garnered many awards, including an Honourable Mention in 2009 from the Astraea Writers Fund. This year Cheryl was featured as one of GO Magazine's 100 Women We Love. Cheryl was also a beloved poetry instructor at the Gotham Writers Workshop in NYC.

On Saturday June 18th 2011, Cheryl Burke (Cheryl B.) died of complications from chemotherapy treatment she had been receiving for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, she was 38.

Go Magazine for more links: http://www.gomag.com/article/100_women_we_love2/77

See Cheryl B live: youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWplVNxvR6s

Amy Winehouse ‘Back to Black’ led to six Grammy Award nominations and five wins, tying the record for one of the most wins by a female artist in a single night, and this made Winehouse the first singer from the United Kingdom to win five Grammys. In 2007, she won a BRIT Award for Best British Female Artist; she had also been nominated for Best British Album. She has won the Ivor Novello Award three times, once in 2004 for Best Contemporary Song (musically and lyrically) for "Stronger Than Me" once in 2007 for Best Contemporary Song for "Rehab", and once in 2008 for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Love Is A Losing Game"…

The internet is swamped with farewells and articles, but the piece that resonated with me the most this week was this in the Sabotage Times written by Robin Lee, ‘Playing Pool With Amy’ http://www.sabotagetimes.com/music/playing-pool-with-amy-winehouse/

Peter Coyte: http://www.petercoyte.co.uk/

Little Miss Cornshucks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaf4DnzTSVM

Heavy TV: http://www.heavyfamily.com/

Nina Simone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck

SaltPeter ‘5am’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_WIlth7qH0

Different Gear: http://www.differentgear.co.uk/

"We are all fighting the good fight - but we are way too harsh in the way we measure success and failure, the way we reward and penalise ourselves. Perhaps loathing and punishing ourselves enough to convince ourselves we will not be sorely missed by every person's life we touched. We may not remember what people say or do, but we do remember how they made us feel." excerpt from springfield road by salena godden

THE BOAT IN THE WHEATFIELD / a short story for Bastille Day

2011-07-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

The Boat In The Wheat Field

Historically Marie Antoinette once said ‘Let them eat cake’ but also historically it is debated that this wasn’t true. It is a fact, that in 1789 a mob descended on the palace at Versailles and King Louis and his royal family were made prisoners in the Tuilerie Palace inside Paris. Marie Antoinette sought aid from other European rulers, including her brother, the Austrian Emperor, and her sister, Queen of Naples. And it is also true that Marie Antoinette attempted to flee Paris two years later in 1791…

When she awoke that morning, she was shivering, her cheek was cold against the hard floor. She opened one eye and saw a finger of dawn light, a trickle of sunshine from in-between the flaps in the tent. She crawled towards it and out onto the dewy grass of the open field. She had slept in all her clothes, she was dishevelled. She stretched her aching body and unruffled her skirts. The Austrian Lieutenant was there, he was alone by the fire with a barrel on his shoulder. He was tall and he looked down at her, he uncorked the stopper and said,

‘Get on your knees and drink!’

Obediently, she did as she was told, feeling the grass was cold beneath her stockinged knees. The alcohol splashed her face, dripped down her chin, stung her tongue but she was refreshed by the wine and happy to see first light. The Lieutenant had appeared from nowhere, he had been sent by her brother and they were to meet the rendezvous at dawn, they had no time to waste. She had questioned him, but he had shot her such a look, she was sure he was not used to being doubted.

The Lieutenant had short, salt and peppered hair and slate-blue eyes which had reddened with booze. She had noticed his eyes and noted that they were exactly the same blue as the Atlantic ocean when it crashed to the rocks, when sunlight caught the tip of roaring waves, like warm yellow light caught in dark water. The Lieutenant was striding ahead confidently. He was broad and strong looking as she walked behind him. Although he had been awake all night by the fire, he was sure footed, he was leading and she was following.

There was a warm, hazy apricot sunrise that August morning and momentarily she dared to stop walking, stand still and listen to the nothing. She looked and all around her was the movement of swaying crops like a steady rolling of waves as they waded through an ocean of golden wheat. Sallow grasses rustled behind her giving her a sense of being watched and a terrible sensation of being followed and so she hurried to catch him up. Her gathered skirts and petticoats were a precarious net slowing her down, making her weary.

He stopped and waited for her to catch up, he watched her silently striding towards him. What could he see that made him stare like that? The rising sun was a halo around his head, but the expression on his face was pure devilish. He beckoned by tilting his chin as they made a path through wheat up to the waist. He was swigging from a bottle of stolen champagne, he clearly hated the French.

‘The last bottle in Paris!’ He repeated defiantly in Austrian and passed it back to her.

There were pools of red and papery poppies like spots of blood, splattered across the yellow and the clay earth. If this was the end of the world, she decided, if this is the end of life, then the fresh air was a sweet freedom, the silence a blessing and even in death she believed she would somehow still exist in this moment. In captivity she had forgotten how wide the sky, she had longed for the warmth of the sun. She felt as though she were flying and this was a vivid moment she knew she would remember somehow; she’d exist like a ghostly wind in this Wheatfield forever.

She hurried towards the Lieutenant, who had stopped and was pointing to a glitter of water, a green river in the far off distance, at the bottom of the field. He looked down at her and she watched his face and saw his throat swallow. He offered her more champagne, it was wet and warm, fizzing on the tongue and she giggled inside, as bubbles went up her nose and she remembered how once, long ago, champagne had been sipped from her own slipper for a wager.

All around her was a haze of yellow and above just endless blue. As she walked she let her fingers trail through the tops of the tallest grasses. She popped a husk, separating wheat from chaff, she ate the pods, they were nutty and corn sweet.

They marched down the steep downhill towards the river, she stumbled a little, light-headed with exhaustion, hunger and champagne. The Lieutenant caught her, held her steady and took her hand. This wasn’t the done thing, but it was a necessary kindness. His hand was so warm, bigger than hers, it felt like a firm reassurance. Paris was aflame with revolution, it was the end of the world as she knew it.

Down by the river, the banks were steep with nettles, cowslips and wild watercress. Without any hesitation the Lieutenant stripped bare and dived into the cold water. Invigorated he gasped and cupping the water he splashed his face and upper body. She would have blushed usually, she might have looked away, but the view was spectacular. He became animated and spoke to her in her native Austrian tongue and to hear her mother language made her heart swell. Would she care to join him? Oh no no no! She laughed.

‘We have made good time!’ He told her, in fact they were early for the rendezvous. The boat, now he told her all about a boat, he told her about a boat that was coming, about a boat he lived on, he told her all about boats. It was not the words she heard exactly, but she was listening to the sounds he made, the way his voice made her feel. Watching him splash and swim in the clear water that golden morning, made her forget where she was, who she was. It was just like a dream she’d always remember, she kept thinking, this is like a dream.

Seeming refreshed with his morning bathe, the Lieutenant climbed up the steep bank. He was shivering slightly. Suddenly shy, modest, he put his trousers on with his back to her. She reached out and touched his shoulder as if to dry it with her shawl and found his freckled skin cool to her touch.

The Lieutenant lay down, stretched out, on his back in the grass and dried off in the sun, he closed his eyes, momentarily. She sat beside him, sipping the last of the champagne. She saw glistening sun-drenched drops of water in his chest hair and navel. He looked so good wet, his eyelashes, his lips. There was nobody else and there was nothing, but the sound of the rushing wheat and water, the river gurgling, a chorus of sweet early birdsong, a morning stillness.

The Lieutenant gathered himself, he squinted and blinked as though he had forgotten she was there for a moment. They laughed, and then they laughed at laughing. She stood up and smiled down at him as he put on his boots. Once dressed, he stood and addressed her, they stood facing each other. But that’s when he suddenly put his hands about her throat. She took a deep intake of breath, he stared into her face and eyes, then he leaned down and kissed her. He kissed her, and he kissed her again, hard and furiously, holding her about the throat and neck, his fingers grasping the nape of her neck and hair. It was dizzying, a bold kiss, a real kiss, a kiss made with intention and without apology, she accepted it and reciprocated. She delighted in the heat of the young man, the warmth and sound of his breath, life awoke in her senses and pumped in her veins making her heart race.

He stumbled heavily onto her…and that’s when she heard the...second gun shot, and that’s when she heard the dogs in the distance. He took her hand and they dived into the wheat for cover. She heard pistols and dogs, they were closing in and that’s when she knew she had run out of time, that this really could be her final moment and that’s where they fell, there, just there.

Once upon a time, on the edge of a Wheatfield, she knelt and held his head, cradling it in her lap. He was younger than she first thought, his face was smooth, his brow unfurrowed. He looked up into her face, his eyes the colour of the Atlantic ocean crashing to the rocks.

She heard the soldiers and dogs approaching fast, but she didn’t move. She stayed with him, stroking his soft cheek, tracing the line of skin where hair began to grow into his beard with her fingertip. She kissed him very gently on his closed eyelids.

Like poppies, his blood made a splash, a flicker of stains on the yellow clay, and as he grew heavier and left her, the last thing he managed to say was,

‘I am so happy.’

originally published by THE ILLUSTRATED APE MAGAZINE

http://www.theillustratedape.com/

More? Summer reads and new work published here:

www.nastylittlepress.org / www.thebookclubboutique.com / www.shortfirepress.com / www.paraphiliamagazine.com / www.tellermagazine.com / www.eatmytangerine.com

Bob Marley. One Love.

2011-05-11T02:20:00.000-07:00

The Bob Marley Museum – live!

When we visited his house in Kingston

I saw the view of Jamaica’s tranquil blue mountains

from his bedroom window

Then they showed us

the bullet holes in his studio wall

from that assassination attempt

We sat in his garden

under his favourite tree

and listened to Trenchtown Rock

And

Bob Marley sings

Don’t Rock My Boat

Alternative voting - Stir It Up

Osama Bin Laden - I Shot The Sheriff

Syrian forces – Could You Be Loved?

Bob Marley passed away on May 11

this is what he’s still singing

looking down from heaven

One Love

Everything’s gonna be alright…

Written for BBC R4's 'Saturday Live' & broadcast May 7th at 9am

Listen again, hear it alive here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgj4

"The first time I saw Bob Marley perform I was eight years old. But the last time I see him will always be tomorrow." Here's a brilliant article by Jamaican born novelist Colin Channer about the late great Marley:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/05/10/thirty-years-after-his-death-bob-marley-lives/?KEYWORDS=channer

Facebook to delete BCB group page, LIKE our new page!

2011-05-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Hello my darlings, hello to all Boutiquers! How are you? How is your spring springing and your May sunshine? I have strawberries and tomatoes flowering on my little prison window sill. My sugar bums, how i long to see you all again, look you in the eyes and say book club and you'll say... It appears the man in the sky that runs facebook is deleting our group page! This means all of you in our FBook group will be deleted as members too! Plus we'll lose lots of photos etc...Facebook call it 'archiving' i guess we must be seen as political renegades and outlandish rebels and so we are...and so with this news it seemed timely to write you one last missive before we all get our new disguises, fake passports and scatter... If you want to find us of course there is always the website www.thebookclubboutique.com twitter @BookCBoutique and myspace don't delete things of course so find us here: myspace/bookclubboutique innit? love books, booze & boogie-woogie then LOVE our new fbook LIKE page! http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Book-Club-Boutique/107572209329622 Please feel free to add your BCB photos and memorabilia there from now on! After hundreds of Soho gigs, charity events, fundraisers, festival shows, erotic gigs, tours, a wedding, book launches and general hellraising The Book Club Boutique has been on a break...its been a mad old time, do you remember the first gigs in Romilly Street, and darling, that cubby hole in Blacks will never be the same! Standon Calling was amazing both years and how beautiful The House Of St Barnabas is...two solid years of non-stop razzle dazzle, a constant flow of the best in publishing, the outsiders, the mainstream, all them writers, those books, the poets, the music, the laughs, the drinkys and the dancing...all so wonderful... Upon our return from our heady tour in Australia, I myself was posted away. I just want to say it was awesome to meet some of you on my little solo book tour through March and April. 'Under The Pier' I'm told is already in its second print run! Also new news: Everyone raise a glass to Lieutenant Xavier Leret who has published an awesome book 'Heaven Sent' to rave reviews and details of that are still up on our page too...while it lasts! We will be back all shiny and new, new venue, new themes, and yes, some funding would be pretty jolly good too now wouldn't it! So i am not sure how i will reach exactly each and everyone of all 3000 of you exactly again??? But i can tell you i am planning something for us all in JUNE in SOHO... can you remember that my sweetpea? JUNE. SOHO. blimey that's only next month! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone on stage and behind the scenes so far...you know who you are and i have your numbers...And huge thanks to all contributors at our latest show down by the seaside! SAVE HASTINGS PIER! Last month we raised over £500 towards the cause! Well done! OK as this group gets sent off into the fbook FBI CIA archives as anti-mental please remember darling, even away from these facetwitspaces i still hold you dear and close to my warm bussoms...boom! boom! sha-boom! boom! boom! SEE YOU IN JUNE! SOHO! love.life.live.long.alive-o yours generally the general sgxxx 'Under The Pier' review came out in this weeks Camden New Journal Read all about it: www.camdennewjournal.com/feature-books-under-pier-salena-godden or pick up free copies of the brilliant CNJ anywhere! Bigthanks to @dancarrier!

COMING UP...MAY 2011

2011-04-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

Tongue Fu – Bank Holiday Special! Mon 2nd May 2011 - Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA Starring Soweto Kinch, Salena Godden & Joe Driscoll Tongue Fu have joined forces with top UK literature producers Renaissance One, and to celebrate we’ve put together something special for May 2nd Bank Holiday. Three riotous renegades of music and spoken word - performing as ever with the improvisatory brilliance of The Tongue Fu Band. Soweto Kinch – Mobo Award winning, Mercury nominated rapper & jazz saxophonist. “It's difficult to think of anyone currently able to produce a more convincing and engaging mix than Soweto Kinch” BBC Review Salena Godden – Poetry goddess published by Penguin & The Guardian; regular on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live & host of the legendary Book Club Boutique. “The doyenne of the spoken word scene.” Ian McMillan BBC Radio 3 Joe Driscoll – Globe-trotting multi-instrumentalist-singer-rapper-one man boundary-hopping entertainer, who’s opened for The Sugar Hill Gang, Matisyahu and Regina Spektor Plus special guest  : Poet In Residence Shane Solanki     Hosted by  Chris Redmond - as heard on BBC Radio 4’s Pick Of The Week    http://www.richmix.org.uk or 020 7613 7498 for tickets : £9 / £7 concs -  Doors 8pm / Show 8.30pm   "It's poetry, but not as you know it…amazing to listen to” The Guardian “Top performance poetry night” The Independent   “the best poetry night in London” WriteOutLoud.net http://youtube.com/tonguefutales MORE top gigs in May 2011 & Coming Soon! MAY 7th: Salena Godden / live resident poet on 'Saturday Live' / BBC RADIO 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgj4 MAY 26th: Salena Godden / howthelightgetsin / HAY-ON-WYE http://www.howthelightgetsin.org/tickets/ MAY 29th: Salena Godden / Bang Said The Gun / Meadowlands / BRIGHTON http://www.bangsaidthegun.com/news/tag/meadowlands-festival/ Out Now 'UNDER THE PIER' published by Nasty Little Press: www.nastylittlepress.org For quick updates / twitter: @BookCBoutique or @salenagodden More info & work at these websites too: www.thebookclubboutique.com and www.shortfirepress.com

A NOTE FROM YOURS GENERALLY...

2011-03-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

Oi oi my little spring lambkins, how are you? I've been asked to write you all a note, seems news is coming in thick and fast from the trenches and buzzing from the front line, who can keep up? Japan! Fukshima! Gadaffi! Charlie Sheen? Save Hastings Pier! Tsunami! Earthquakes! The anti-everything march! Lets make pizza not nuclear power...Scary times...And so in the name of books, booze and boogie-woogie please pass this info around the class and lets get some BCB shenanigans brewing... MARCH! March came in like a lion and i hope it will go out like a lamb. Tomorrow BCBer's are meeting BCB DJ's Carbo & Hydrate to take a sound system down to meeting point NUMBER 13 on the EASTERN END of the EMBANKMENT if you wish to all join the peaceful march with fellow BCBers head there for around 10ish. i hear the legendary Red Jen will be performing too.... JAPAN! Also tomorrow afternoon a crew of wicked poets are gathering for The Japan Fund, a spoken word fundraiser for the victims of the Japan Tsunami. Superstars like Inua Ellams + Pete the Temp + William Stopha + Alex Gwyther + Christian Watson + Fiona Bevan + Paul Cree from the Rubix Collective + Robert Auton. With DJ Able and Dan Simpson as compere. Tickets are £6/£5 - all proceeds go towards the British Red Cross Relief Effort.2-6PM THE OLD QUEENS HEAD PUB / 44 ESSEX ROAD / LONDON / N1 BCB 'SAVE HASTINGS PIER!' Next Saturday! We have our fundraising extravaganza of spoken word and music. Poets, Authors, Musicians, Artists & DJ's are gathering to raise money to 'SAVE HASTING PIER!' Saturday April 2nd. The Brass Monkey. Hastings. 3pm 'til very late! Killer line-up featuring sizzling sets from local talent, Hastings legends, Brighton's literati and London's Book Club Boutique all-stars! Following the recent publication of Salena Godden's 'Under The Pier' by Nasty Little Press, we couldn't go lamenting the good old days of Hastings Pier without trying to help. Please help us spread the word, WE SEEK DONATIONS and cool raffle prizes, signed books, memorabilia, signed albums, art etc...Come! Get involved! more info about the charity: 'SAVE HASTINGS PIER' FBOOK GROUP: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21683162262 Spring is springing...spread the word and save the world...it is poets that die in the trenches... for your listening pleasure after all that activity, relax and turn on your BBC R3 wireless to hear the wonderful IAN MCMILLAN, PJ HARVEY, HANIF KURESHI and SALENA GODDEN on The VERB tonight, the day of our lord, Friday march 25th at 9.15pm...tune in, turn on...yeah yeah...over and out. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zm53l love. life. live. long. alive-o! Yours most Generally sgx RIP ELIZABETH TAYLOR

HAMMER & TONGUE UK: UNDER THE PIER

2011-03-02T06:19:00.000-08:00

Hello my boutique friends, fellow poets and writerly mates: In the name of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie, I'm thrilled to write to tell you 'Under The Pier' has been published by Nasty Little Press! This is my first poetry collection and a handsome fellow it is too! We've been putting together a mini-UK tour throughout March/April with Hammer & Tongue to help promote it, starting tomorrow March 3rd in Brighton! SEE YOU HERE & THERE! HAMMER & TONGUE & UK TOUR DATES: MARCH 3rd / HAMMER & TONGUE / BRIGHTON MARCH 7th / HAMMER & TONGUE / HACKNEY MARCH 9th / HAMMER & TONGUE / CAMBRIDGE MARCH 12th / WOMEN'S DAY GIG / HASTINGS MARCH 14th/ HAMMER & TONGUE / CAMDEN MARCH 15th / HAMMER & TONGUE / BRISTOL MARCH TBC. / HAMMER & TONGUE / OXFORD MARCH 25th / THE VERB / LIVE BBC BROADCASTING HOUSE APRIL 9th /JOHN COOPER CLARKE / DE LA WARR, BEXHILL APRIL 19th / NORWICH POETRY CLUB / NASTY LITTLE PRESS APRIL TBC / BCB -NLP -SFP LONDON LAUNCH PARTY!!! QUESTION: WHEN IS THE NEXT BCB???? ANSWER: APRIL 2011 THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE & NASTY LITTLE PRESS & SHORTFIRE PRESS: 3-WAY TRIPLE LAUNCH & BCB BIRTHDAY BASH! With performances from: SALENA GODDEN JOHN OSBORNE LAURA DOCKRILL NADIFA MOHAMED MARTIN FIGURA HOSTED BY LUKE WRIGHT PLUS DJ REDMAN & THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE BAND LIVE *Launch UNDER THE PIER poetry by SALENA GODDEN published by NASTY LITTLE PRESS *Launch of brilliant new digital short story publishers SHORTFIRE PRESS *Launch of PIECE OF ROPE the new single by The Book Club Boutique Band 5 websites to watch: www.nastylittlepress.org www.hammerandtongue.co.uk www.thebookclubboutique.com www.shortfirepress.com www.trolleybooks.com love.life.live.long.alive-o! the general x PS: Coming soon 'Yellow' selected stories published by www.trolleybooks.com EVENT PAGE ON FBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=182291831814568 http://www.nastylittlepress.org/books/under-the-pier/ Details for the next Book Club Boutique: For quick updates please follow us on twitter: @BookCBoutique or @salenagodden

UNDER THE PIER published by NASTY LITTLE PRESS

2011-02-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

UNDER THE PIER SALENA GODDEN Come with Salena Godden under the pier “where the magic mushrooms make the sea all blood and ink.” This isn’t deckchairs and knotted handkerchiefs – this is Hastings, “where it’s as cheap as chips / and the bad boys, they crack on / even when the condom rips.” Godden leads you through her scrumpy-soaked teenage years in Bottle Alley to the tumbling, breathless Soho streets, to graveyard snogs and chance meetings with Patti Smith in Saint Michel. Under The Pier is bursting with romanticism and longing, triumphing over a more seedy, sinister undertow. Salena Godden is a legend on the live poetry scene. She is the lyricist and lead singer of underground eclectic ska-break band SaltPeter whose last record was listed as one of the outstanding albums of 2007 by The Independent. “Catch her as she tumbles breathlessly from one dark thought to the next.” The Times “Salena Godden is a tour de force… Rather than perfecting a style, Salena is style. Like most artists of note – there is no one like her.” Lemn Sissay “She is everything the Daily Mail is terrified of.” Kerrang “That’s what women’s emancipation is all about.”John Cooper Clarke “Smart, smutty, sharp, sassy and salacious. I’d hate it if this joy of a poet ever disapiered.” Tim Wells UNDER THE PIER published by NASTY LITTLE PRESS You can order your copy here and now: http://www.nastylittlepress.org/books/under-the-pier/

What to do when when the words don't come...

2011-02-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

What do you do when the word don't come... ....turn Naomi Woodis status update comments into a poem... What do you do when the words don't come? masturbation followed by hysterical laughter then go to the nearest pub have a beer or a glass of wine flirt with the bar man maybe he won't notice you much as he is wiping glasses write about it the polished glasses then read a newspaper flick through the pictures mostly war and war and tits watch the sky that's more like it write about the lilac light of a February afternoon then get a warm sense of gratitude think what a lucky person you are order soup enjoy eating too much butter on thick chunky bread salt yes another beer or wine why not lucky you for there are times when you cannot afford both food and drink flirt with the owner look at the surface of the oak table wonder to yourself are my friends with normal hours finishing work yet? must be soon its dusk text 'i am in my pub, fancy supper?' then await replies order another beer maybe flirt with the bar staff a bit more or write about them all laugh to yourself how amusing your little story is about the old man in the corner of the pub he has a nose like a beetroot the street lights are orange now its dark outside rush hour has picked up the city is changing tempo vibrating differently its not afternoon anymore a new crowd starts to come in they twitter they bring cold air inside they phone each other from across the pub maybe your friends will come meet you or maybe not it doesn't matter now either way "because the thing you were stuck writing the block was not a block you just needed a man with a nose like a beetroot" what a wonderful life it is when we don't write about it but live inside it. (c) Salena Godden 2011.

STOP PRESS: Your Latest BCB Oz Tour Newsletter...

2011-01-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE DOWN UNDER - NOW HEADING FROM NEW SOUTH WALES TO VICTORIA Are we coming to a town near you? All the way from London and driven by our love of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie, the General Salena Godden and Major Max Doray, we have been on a wet and wild mission, through floods, cyclones and electrical storms, tackling croc infested water holes, swimming through tea-tree lakes, collecting mozzie bites, gathering poets and music makers and doing blistering sets and wicked gigs all along the East Coast. Our tour started in December up in deep Bundjalung country and ends in a mega road trip to the hip city of Melbourne. The Book Club Boutique Band have joined forces with Australian cohorts, guitarist Melania Jack and Patty Preece on drums - both from the outrageously sparkly Shiny Shiny. We've been playing a brilliant variety of venues; taking Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie from Soho to the rainforest, from the lush green England town to the gold coast loveshack; from Nimbin’s Turntable Hall to a Lismore Cocktail bar, Byron’s Belongil Treehouse and The Sheoak Shack at Fingal Head. The Book Club Boutique posse went Priscilla Queen of the desert style when we performed at a big fat gay disco for New Years at the Tropical Fruits Recovery Party - supporting Shiny Shiny. On our travels we have discovered so much wicked talent and made new friends with brilliant poetry from Jane Treasure, David Hallett, Christine Strellen, Rhys Rogers, Stefanie Petrik, Rosie Sherwood, Daevid Allen (from Gong fame) Plus stunning music and poetry from gorgeous Ilona Harker. And live music doesn’t get better with awesome sets from Melania Jack, the tremendous Hussy Hicks and also Frank Coorey and his band. Plus a kitch musical extravaganza from Combat Cabaret and made pals with The Blush Foundation too. Last week The Book Club Boutique Band were in ULive Studios (near Christmas Beach and Byron Bay) collaborating and working on tracks with the wonderful Hussy Hicks. We don't mind admitting it, we are so star struck by these ladies, and really look forward to sharing and releasing these recordings with you all soon! We arethrilled to announce that coming up we have THREE more big shows: Newcastle, Royal Exchange, Jan 14th Salena Godden & The Book Club Boutique Band Special Guests: Melania Jack, Kira Peru, author Jude Conway & more... Sydney, Red Rattler, Jan 19th Salena Godden & The Book Club Boutique Band Special Guests: Melania Jack, Raymond Nedziak, Justine Poon, Busty Beats, Molly Stolly, Rosie Sherwood & more... Melbourne, Bertha Browns, The End of Tour Super Show, Jan 22nd The End of Tour Show – Salena Godden & The Book Club Boutique Band Special Guests: Alicia Sometimes, Sean Whelan, Cara Fox, Kris Saknusseum, Jez PA Speelman, Simone Pileggi, Daniel Alexander, Di Drew, Amy Acre, Fiona Stuart, Komninos Konstantinos Zervos & more... So far we have been on the Aural Text Show on 3RR Radio in Melbourne and also Talking Out Your Arts on 2SER Radio in Sydney. We have featured in The Nimbin Good Times, The Byron Bay Echoe and The Northern Star - The words are Book. Club. Boutique. and the word is spreading! So if you are in NSW or Victoria then come along - pass this on! Big shout out and thanks to all poets, authors, musicians, raconteurs and dudes who are helping us on our way Tug Dumbly, Benito Di Fonzo to name just two... Let us all raise a glass to great writing, wicked music and lots of fun London style, Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie! love.life.live.long.alive-oh Yours Generally, sgx Wanna see pics, live gig footage or check out our new friends down under? Please go to The Book Club Boutique website: www.thebookclubboutique.com quick news snippets on twitter: @bookcboutique 2SER / Arts Magazine Radio Show 'Talking Through Your Arts' for Sydney area! www.2ser.com Triple R 'Aural Text' Radio Show / Melbourne Radio 1027fm. www.rrr.org.au

THE BCB DOWN UNDER / A LETTER FROM THE RAINFOREST

2011-01-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

local time: 7.30am. date: decemberry. climate: tropics. co-ordinates: rainforest. north of nimbim. northern rivers territories. bundjalung country. tuntable commuity. message to all boutiquers, for your eyes only, hello can you hear me? hello? blip blip...signal...a weak signal but something...i can hear a connection...i hope this will reach you...and those of you that can hear this message, your general wishes you a merry merry good morning or the sweetest good evening depending on where on gods earth you are... this first week we have been in a industrious whirlwind, we have swam in the pacific and dived through waterfalls, swam in watering holes and sheltered from the most awesome electrical storms, magnificent cacophony, orchestras of thunder and lightening and sipped whiskies beneath the starriest skies. and all this - whilst gathering poets, authors and movers and groovers from up and down the east coast to join our tour. we did a load of eucalyptus oil last night and this warned off the mozzies but this morning i smell like a koalas bum and i seem to have stopped wearing any clothes i appear to have woken up in the rainforest. after last nights battle, i slept in a safehouse, a treehouse, high up in the hills. i am in bundjalung country and waking up to hear the early morning bird song, i laid in my bunk and recall watching a huge spider devouring a moth in its web above my head. i stayed quite still watching the spider wrap the silken thread around its victim and as i write this, currently it is sucking its brains out. the mothy memories of full moonlight are being eaten by the jaws of spider hell, yes, war is harsh and nature is creul. we have witnessed all manner of wildlife here - leeches, worms, centipedes, tics, midges, lizards, jumping ants, flying foxes, wallabys, whip birds, enormous bird-eating butterflies - think of the bush tucker trials on 'i'm a celebrity get me out of here' - yes all them critters, but without the celebrities - god is merciful. last night was our first battle at the tuntable hall outside of nimbin. note: this was the first time we tied the book club boutique bunting between palm trees and also the first time we played together under the southern cross. we were delighted to seek out such wicked poets from the local communities, jane treasure and pico, david hallett, christine strellen, outstanding performances, brilliant! we will soon post links on our webternet pages so you can check out these excellent poets... its brilliant to be re-united with the aussie contingent of the book club boutique army, private patty and lieutenant jack, last night i was star struck to play alongside the hussy hicks! beautiful! our major max is ahead of us, down in base camp in the town of lismore and i can assure you there will be evidence and footage up on our website, so check in at www.thebookclubboutique.com tonight we play lismore and sunday down in byron bay! if you know any boutiquers in these territories send them to us, the more the merrier. united we stand for all things books, booze and boogie-woogie! i must admit, even though i am the general, even i am scared of the toilet here. there are brown snakes. ground snakes. the very dangerous ones. i am going to have to hold it in until we reach the border! i raise a glass to you, to the solstice and the yuletide. and i salute my grandmother from colonels ridge and the blue mountains of Jamaica, who passed away yesterday morning. we believe her spirit rises with us. i sense her near me. the morning she died the wildest storm died down, i planted tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes, i water them and think of her until i can get home to my family. rest in peace muriel burke, my tigerlilly, my tigers eye. love. life. live. long. alive sha-boom boom boomerang general g

LIN - winner of best international short film at Raindance 2010

2010-10-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

LIN - Piers Thompson / Hector Films

I was thrilled to discover that LIN won the Best International Short Film prize at this years Raindance Film Festival 2010 in London. I was also lucky enough to go to the screening at The Apollo Cinema and sensed the reactions to these arresting and beautiful images unfolding on the screen and igniting inspiration. In short - LIN is the touching, tender story of a housewife who walks out of her front door and keeps walking, she walks down her street, down the road and keeps going, until she is lost and found…but I don’t want to give too much away. Most notably, I feel there is a real craft and skill to story-telling and starting a tale in the middle of the story. It is generous when this occurs in books too, we are given freedom to be intelligent and imaginative enough to assume a past and to paint a possible future. Quite literally it is as though we have been picked up by a giant and thrown into the plot, and as audience, we are launched into the head space of our lead character. Here in his new film LIN Piers Thompson has created exactly this, illustrating a narrative chunk, the gap between the two ends of a piece of string, the fork in the road. I have been fortunate enough to have seen all three of this set of short films and find Piers Thompson has an unmistakable tone, a flair and style very much of his own. Stark, understated and never screaming at the audience, but leading them gently to use their own experience and intelligence. These films are loaded with symbols or clues to unveil meaning, the materials of the spirit, the characters experience. As in life we cling onto these objects, these shapes, like a talisman to bring us closer to something that once bared truth - albeit your child's first blanket, a lucky key-ring or a silver necklace. In the story of LIN I felt we were reminded of the nature of intention, that the more we do alone, the more we can do alone, and the more we accomplish alone, the stronger we become, until we are unaware we are alone. In all three of Piers Thompson’s short films his signature note and trademark is the survival of the core of human strength. In his first short, the award-winning WAVERLEY he examined the end of life, old age and frailty. Next through his production company Hector Films, Piers Thompson went on to write and produce K where we faced the universe of the misunderstood runaway teen and the difficulties of coming-of-age. And here in LIN we come in at the middle and meet the isolation of after-summer and middle-age. It is relevant and important to note that although they are not the same person, the same woman, his main narrators have all been female. And all of these female characters are alone, be it in old age, in puberty or in middle-age. In many ways I believe this is a feminist work as it flows with themes of birth, sex, survival and death as seen from a female perspective. There is a solitude, vulnerability in these three stages of the career of womanhood and it is treated with such intimacy it is as if we are spying into a very private world, the world without the mask. In LIN we examine routine and choice, we are permitted to imagine we can change our minds even if it may be easier to continue on the same road. There is such a quiet storm in Lin, the films namesake and his key character and we sympathise with her alienation in a world making a noise that makes no sense. Piers Thompson has a way of creating characters we empathise with, we fall in myth with, we feel alone with. Most interesting of all is Thompson’s ability to leave enough space and time so you cannot help but compare yourself with the lead narration. It comes as no surprise to discover that one of Thompson's influences is the brilliant Austrian film maker Michael Haneke - for example check out Haneke's bleak portrayal of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek's 'The Piano Teacher' and the violence of the shocking-calm contradiction in the final scene. There is a brutality and sharp honesty with Piers Thompson, the man, the writer and the director and because of this, these stories are clear and clean. Such raw truth is found in the best poetry and it is rare. These subtle stories are difficult to portray, as in life, villians are not always villains and victims are not always victims, and also as in life the hardest step is the first one. Lastly in Thompson’s work is the underlying kindness, that it’s the smallest things that count. Acts so simple but neccesary are lifted and highlighted inexplicably. In these frames we are inhabiting cold spaces, harsh truths, stark worlds and isolation, but we meet people willing to do the right thing, often the small thing, often the wordless and thankless. This to me suggests that we do rely on the strangeness of kindness, the kindness of strangers. Piers Thompson’s work in this new film moves me. It is his understanding of human nature that astounds me, and I mean real human nature, flawed and broken. The three stages of the female career are blown apart, ripped open like fruit to reveal the stone heart of the matter. Watching LIN I was left with many questions. But most of all I burned with the question: what would happen if I started walking, walked out of my house, walked out of my life, got on a train and just never turned back? Maybe it is all about letting go of the sides, letting go of the past, letting go of the safe to go into the unknown, which is your choice and your life. I suggest you look out for these films currently screening at numerous international film festivals - next stop LIN will feature at The Cork Film Festival, Ireland. It is easy to expect brilliant things from this young director and film maker and I am looking forward to his first feature film too. It goes without saying, I wholly recommend LIN to you, because I believe you will also ask yourself these questions and if you are very lucky, perhaps, you will also find some answers. some links: www.lintheshortfilm.com www.raindance.org www.hectorfilms.co.uk © Salena Godden. 2010

watch Lin here: http://www.lintheshortfilm.com/

THE HEARTLAND - BBC RADIO FESTIVAL POEM BY SALENA GODDEN

2010-10-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

THE HEARTLAND: Poem written for the BBC Radio Academy, RadioFestival 2010 - ‘Festival Gatecrash’ Performed and written yesterday in response to the question ‘What’s wrong with radio?’ and delivered live on a panel plucked from the world of politics, piracy, philosophy and social media. Other 'radio rebels' on the panel included DJ Johnny Jay (Pirate Radio) John Morter (Save 6 Music and the mastermind of the Rage Against the Machine Christmas number one campaign) Andy Spinoza (SKV) and Ken Livingstone among others. The debate was chaired by the brilliant Mariella Frostrup and recited in front of packed theatre audience of senior executives, programmers and producers from the BBC, commercial, local, community and internet radio stations. Video footage on YouTube and BBC website links soon come. THE HEARTLAND it’s been nearly 20 years since i first held a mic put it to my lips and said what i like and in 20 years i bared witness to the evolution a literary explosion, the publishing revolution but the revolution will not be televised slipped between art and comedy and demoralised poetry is all cream tea and margarine-a-lised rinsed and bleached and sanitised its not what’s wrong with radio but surely what is write right but it seems so scripted and stuffy and far too polite for at festivals it’s the writers who stay up all night and there is a rise in literary salons where words really bite There is a heartland in-between the rap dream; the coming of age teen and the rock and roll scene and the booker prize winner in the back of a limousine and the struggling poet drinking ink and gasoline know what I mean? All we hear is radio ga-ga lady ga-ga in a meat bra all we hear is radio ga-ga lady ga-ga in a meat bra All we hear is radio goo-goo elton john and lady lulu lady madonna, now there’s a lady graham norton and paul o’grady will the real slim shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up! The revolution will not be televised but its resonating on Resonance podcast and twitterbooked The revolution will not be televised its there on my i-tunes and overlooked The written word spoken with honest intentions even though its not mainstream or in the times lit. sup. mentions Actions speak louder than words the pen is mightier than the clean page there is this heartland of undiscovered writing between the underground and the hay-on-wye stage what is required i feel is a literary john peel to open the gates and let in some air and light because this revolution should broadcast and that’s what’s right with radio right? write, right, write, right! © 2010. Salena Godden *Hey, there wasn’t time to thank the radio shows and producers who do programme slots for poetry and short fiction - but you know who you are and this poem salutes you. Thank you to Radio 4's Today programme for asking me along, kinda scary, but great fun!

THe BCB Returns to HOSB, Autumn series 2010 - Oct.8th - GOLD PARTY!

2010-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Dear BCBoutiquers, It has come to my attention that we will be instigating an offensive of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie on the House Of St Barnabas in the Englandtown of Soho next Friday October 8th at 7pm. Cleverly we will cover our tracks, cunningly disguising ourselves in gold and shiny things and all things that glitter like stars. This will put them off the scent. They will gaze upon the shine and glamour of our golden attire and completely forget the ghastly war. What i need to know is will you please all get naked and spray yourself gold and dance like the lady from 'the tales of the unexpected' please? Kidding? Come to The Book Club Boutique GOLD show... We will hear a five star, gold star, sneak preview of NIKESH SHUKLA's debut novel 'Coconut Unlimited' + we will celebrate the launch of THE MECHANICS INSTITUTE REVIEW, MIR7 published by Birkbeck featuring new work from BERNADINE EVARISTO, XAVIER LERET, JOHN LUCAS, SALENA GODDEN and out this month too + we will high-five and salute the debut album of the utterly fabulous DEAN ATTA's "Missing Piece' too! Plus as if all that isn't exciting enough this will be The Book Club Boutique Band's FIRST gig with a NEW mystery member to the army...our NEW guitarist...mysterious indeed....but ALL will be revealed...!!! Dress Code GOLD - Goldfinger to Bollywood - think golden oldies, think golden brown and all that glitters is...And of course upon entry you will be served specially designed free 'Midas Touch' cocktails, liquid gold, golden nectar? yum! love.life.live.long.alive-o The General and now a short commercial break: ARE YOU MISSING THE SUMMER? As you know in August at Standon Calling Festival The Book Club Boutique curated the BCB's own stage for the first time - 3 days of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie - dressed as gangsters and cigar-chewing molls. We also produced the first Book Club Boutique Radio shows live on Diesel Radio. Here is a half hour clip, a taster of our summertime! Hosted By Salena Godden & Max Doray, featuring BCB stars, live interviews & live on site! http://www.mixcloud.com/dieselumusic/book-club-boutique-live-at-standon-calling/ WHEN IS THE NEXT BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE? Remember, Remember, the 5th of November... "Books Booze & Boogie-Woogie..." in The Bookseller: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/124748-page.html www.myspace.com/bookclubboutique Please visit the BCB facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55814894329 twitter: @BookCBoutique "The Book Club Boutique is the bomb: It's not as much as on the grapevine as the entire vineyard." LEMN SISSAY "The Book Club Boutique is single handedly bringing the literary salon back to its gloriously pissed-up Soho-basement roots.” DAZED MAGAZINE

A LETTER FROM YOUR GENERAL: FROM MOORISH MOUNTAIN TO DUBLIN

2010-08-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

Dearest Darlingheart, My heart leaps to even begin this letter! This very eve there is a scent of night blooming jasmine upon the air! With it wafts great luck as your letters reach me to fill my heart with such joy. Oh my Darling, it pains me that I haven’t been permitted to reply until now. You must have been worried sick but fear not, your general, that is me, I and I, is alive and well. Following the great battle of Standon Calling, I was posted here to this Moorish land, a safe house in the mountains. I have been forced into solitary confinement for the duration it seems. I have been watching the life of the ant and the life of the eagle and contemplating the blue space between them. I wake most mornings to watch the sun rise and then spend the silent waking hours, writing and reading and writing and reading and writing…books are my saving grace! Thank God and Queen we continue to fight so hard for them! The heat is terrific, you will hardly recognise my Arabian skin. I live on mostly fresh tomatoes and basil. And I have discovered that the local goats manage to strain an egg-shaped cheese out of their beaks, which is somewhat a local delicacy too. The battle of The Book Club Boutique at Standon Calling was an enormous triumph, a three-day BCB stage of brilliant music, readings, performance and DJ’s and we can only thank our almighty army! How wonderful and how brave everyone fought, how courageous! What a fiesta! Jam-packed with lively new friends and pretty faces, many of which I see have joined our army! A very warm welcome to you! My turtle dove-love, it has come to my attention that photographic evidence of the great Standon battle is now readily available on the community pages - Taken by Private First Class, Rosie Sherwood, The BCB Official Field Photographer - you will note most of us are heavily disguised as gangsters and hoodlums so please don’t be alarmed. During this great war for books, booze and boogie-woogie this behaviour is deemed necessary. There are video recordings and radio telecommunications also posted up and more to come - our field archivist codename:Redman recorded much of the weekend. In fact ‘Diesel Radio’ have been broadcasting a tasty 30-minute archive sampler of some of our BCB radio show recorded live from the Standon trenches, featuring BCB heroes, live and alive! Oh my treacle-pie, I am sure you can put your bridge game aside, raise your gin and salute your wireless to hear your BCB on the front line transported to the home hearth. Fine tune into this channel here: www.mixcloud.com/dieselumusic/book-club-boutique-live-at-standon-calling My fox-glove, I must admit I was startled by the silence and the solitude at first. I don’t mind telling you, my heart longed for your kippers, for little Johnny to hop on my knee and ask me to tell him silly stories of blood and guts and gore and gallant and for Lucy to hide in the wardrobe looking for witches and lions. Home fires seem so very far from me. I haven’t spoken the Queens English for so long. However I have managed to get a signal for the BBC world service so I know England Town is still almighty, which is a great comfort. Be brave my love, I will be home again before you know it. What I do, I do for books! I find I have confidently replenished my coffers with new material, new writings have been carefully edited and prepared for yet further forays and adventures into publishing’s - so hip hip hooray for that. Darling, the other night, when the moon was full, a group of bandits disguised as ‘musicians’ took it upon themselves to rescue me. They bundled me into a van and drove me for miles to another mountainside to play a ‘gig’ in the town square’s Fiesta – just like a church fete, dear, but held at night time and seemingly without any scones or cup cakes – it was my duty to sing songs, about some fellow from "Guantanamera" and someone they called “La Bamba” and I don’t mind telling you I have no idea who this La la la la la Bamba fellow is, but he seemed pretty popular with the local villagers! Alas! The escape was a total failure! To play along with the scheme I sipped upon iced and minted drinks they called mojitos and although I saw a boat out in the calm moonlit ocean, it was not for me as I had suspected all along. Dumbfounded, I toyed with the idea of making a run for it, diving off the rocky cliff and swimming to Dover, damn it, if I had to, but it was not to be - and they brought me back to my confines again. Worry not my little apple-blossom-puff! There is light on the horizon, for we have made a connection with Ireland and one will be in the land of Dublin to meet the BCB troops for the battle of The Electric Picnic. This is a certainty - There is a picnic that they are electrifying and we have been called upon to do our duty for this cause - I have heard word from Wing Commander Mulligan and Major Max that I will be smuggled across the border to meet The Book Club Boutique at The Electric Picnic! From there I am sure we can electrify the picnic and still make it home in one piece. It won’t be easy but we’ll use the powerful tools of Guinness and the currency of Jamesons to find safe passage back to blighty: http://www.electricpicnic.ie/tickets/ Tell your dear mother I keep her photograph with me always. My Cherry-moon - until I kiss your face again - you must know, I kiss it one hundred times before I fall asleep. And rest assured we will be reunited, the BCB will return to the heart of England Town and The House of St Barnabus when golden leaves fall upon Soho Square. Ama la Vida! Viven! De largo! Vivo! Ole! or rather… Love. Life. Live. Long. Alive-o Yours Generally, General G. "Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: Waking Up." Antonio Machado And here are some links for excellent further reading material: http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2010/8/23/4611743.html or http://urbandistrictwriter.blogspot.com/

I couldn't wake you from your slumber / Letter from your General / Standon No.1

2010-08-05T05:52:00.000-07:00

Dearest Darlingheart, As I write this I am watching you sleeping softly and how angelic you look, how peaceful. I dare not wake you, my love, so you will find this letter on your pillow and when you open your beautiful eyes I will be gone far, far away to fight in this beastly war. It’s a bookclubboutique thing, it is our duty, each and every one of us, to fight in these battles for the love and the freedom and the joys of books, booze and boogie-woogie. Apple-pops, my dear skies, you know you would have only cried, if I had let you see me off at the station and I cannot stand long goodbyes nor to see you tearful. I will be back and under your feet, leaving the top off the milk and toast crumbs in the butter before you know it. Dear Sugarcheeks, we mustn’t make a fuss, we must all keep a stiff upper hip and put our best book forward. Thank you for the extra pair of clean socks and the photograph of your Mother I find you have slipped into my kit bag, this is most kind and thoughtful of you. Please tell little Johnny the General said he must eat his greens if he wants to grow big and strong and read and write the big books like his heroes. And tell dear little Lucy there are no monsters in the wardrobe! Ah dear Lucy, she is growing so fast, I do hope she will remember the General when I return and dare I say I hope she will include me with fondness in her childhood memoirs one day. Buttercup, I promise I will send correspondence from the front line as best I can. Please don’t find these missives from the trenches too strange. But heed that these letters will reach you from a war torn mind. You cannot imagine what I now face, how all that mud and hay, the barrage of constant bright lights and loud music, what that can do to a human being. Don’t fret I will spare you the grimy details, the agony of gangrene, trench foot and the weevils. Luckily we have Colonel Boris McNabb in charge of the mess and rations, so we’ll no doubt be well fed, there will be decent tea and tiffin’s a-plenty. Major Max and I have ensured that the BCB will be able to broadcast to your wireless and stereographs via radio telecommunications from the front line to you and all of your friends and families in the England Town, the city of Europe land and beyond. The first ever BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE RADIO SHOWS will be aired live from STANDON CALLING on DIESEL RADIO. On line, On site, On it! We will play archive BCB recordings, going back from the early heady Dicks Bar shows in Soho up to the present, live at Standon Calling, including clips from our show, backstage chat & star interviews! You will hear TWO Book Club Boutique Radio broadcasts: The archive hour: Friday 1pm - 3pm The live hour: Sunday 10am – 11am Just go to: www.dieselradio.com And so off I go to war whistling “Oh pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile smile!” Keep your powder dry and your ink wet! love.life.live.long.alive-o Yours Generally General Godden TOP SECRET INFORMATION FOR BOUTIQUERS ONLY For those of you that will be at Standon Calling… Disguised heavily as ‘cigar chewing gangsters’ and ‘whiskey sipping molls’ The Book Club Boutique Speakeasy Standon Battalion roll call and battle plan is thus: SCARFACE! THE AL CAPONE SPECIAL Friday Nights Grand Opening 7pm: DJ Redman Host: Salena Godden & The Book Club Boutique Band Amah-Rose Mcknight Nikesh Shukla Moustache Man Stuart Evers Orlando Seale & Band DJ Carbo & Hydrate Amber Marks Sara StockBridge Jont Trash Money The Book Club Boutique Band finale’ DJ Boris McNabb MA BARKER’S SAFE HOUSE SET Saturday’s Daylight Robbery 12:00 DJ Zion Bru Hosts: Amah Rose McKnight & Oli Spleen Xavier Leret Orlando Seale Kim Sherwood Amber Marks Niall O’Sullivan Ray Shell Fran & Josh Moustache Man Kate Daisy Grant DJ Matt Gross THE JOHN DILLINGER SUITE Saturday Night Watch 8pm: Hosts: Nikesh Shukla & Salena Godden The Book Club Boutique Band Stuart Evers Nikesh Shukla Kate Daisy Grant Moldeviant Lisa Lore Salena Godden (spoken word set) Claire Nicolson Band Pink Narcissus host: The Book Club Boutique Band finale’ DJ’s Carbo & Hydrate DON’T WAKE THE BABY! BABY FACE NELSON’s Sunday Lunch Out 12:00 chill out in the hide out and lay low Wise words and mellow tunes from: Jont David J Kate Tempest Kim Sherwood Karen Hayley Lisa Lore Salena Godden Delirium Tremens Amber Marks Central Reservation plus a Sunday roast of BCB DJ’s & open mic too! BLOW THE SAFE! THE BONNIE & CLYDE FINALE Sunday (after Buenavista Social Club) Did you know Bonnie & Clyde took 50 bullets when they were finally caught?! And so we bring you the 50-Bullet All-Star Super-Jam! THE BONNIE & CLYDE GRAND SLAM FINALE 50 quickfire surefire sets, last man standing… The Book Club Boutique Band / Salena Godden / Sara Stockbridge / Amah-Rose Mcknight / Kate Tempest / Vashti / Kim Sherwood & Pink Narcissus / Oli Spleen / Nikesh Shukla / Xavier Leret / Moustache Man / Trash Money / Lisa Lore / Orlando Seale and Band / Claire Nicolson and Band / Niall O’Sullivan / Jont / David J / Karen Hayley / Central Reservation / The Book Club Boutique DJ’s Followed by the J Edgar Hoover-up! Tune into Diesel! Over and out! Pip Pip!

ARE YOU READY FOR THE BCB SPEAKEASY AT STANDON CALLING?

2010-08-02T03:20:00.000-07:00

A LETTER FROM THE GENERAL DELIVERED VIA EAGLE UPON THE EVE OF THE AUGUST OFFENSIVE TO THE BATTLE OF STANDON IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWENTY TEN: For the eyes of Boutique Army only, please burn your lap top and poke your eyes with pencils after reading: Dearest troops, Following the battle of the Fort of Port Eliot they did me a mischief and did manage to capture me once more! I cannot believe my bad luck! This time they have me under lock and key up some mountain in a Godforsaken place they call The Peak District. I am sure its a cover up and that them mountains are made of cardboard! I am surrounded by purplish and green hills and paper mache sheep. i know these sheep and believe they are the same ones from last time! I have very little time to write this missive before they do cut me off by the goolies and sense the signal...I have managed to get a signal by dangling this lap top out of my cell barred window and attaching it to the wings of a duck...but while i have signal i must say 'twas an awesome battle we did fight upon the barricades of St Germans! Port Eliot was amazing! Thank you and hurrah to all Port Eliots! You who were so kind and generous in spirit and body and soul and cider and hay. I thank you for all the kind words which have reached me via code, via pigeon and telepathically, thank you, we loved the Port Eliot too, so many fine shows were seen, such wonderful poets, authors and musicians, oh how i love thee all. I have a bunk bed and a cell not much bigger than a tea bag box where i do share bunkers with Dockers, otherwise known as Ms Laura Dockrill to you. They also captured the brilliant author Nii Parkes who is down the corridor from us. We have been up with the larks to climb mountains with our bare hands and we have drank from rivers - a copper taste meets upon the tongue with a hint of heather and gorse weeds - At the peak we looked down into a rainbow and were not without praise for this creation and the spinning earth that is this planet upon which we fight for freedom of books and booze and boogie woogie. I have no idea how long they plan to keep me inside this time. As you know the next battle is that of THE STANDON CALLING FESTIVAL on the AUGUST 6TH, 7TH & 8TH...our soliders for this are fearless, our barricade strong, our fortress without holes and our army is almighty, we will see you there, my love, we will fight and we will dance, we will sing hurrah for books and booze and boogie woogie and we will have the most wonderful weekend of it at the Bonnie and Clyde speakeasy! Your disguise should be that of cigar chewing moll or gangster or cop! Do you have your papers and passes for this weekends battle sorted and your disguises and uniforms ready? Boots polished and guns greased? Are you ready to hide out and lay low at our tasty crime themed speakeasy literary extravaganza at Standon Calling festival! Only 5 days to go! We'll be there, disguised as whiskey sipping gangsters, Bonnie and Clyde, baby, prohibition has never been sexier! oh cuff me! When you come by the Book Club Boutique Speakeasy at Standon Calling you can have your very own mug shot taken! We'll be booking 'em, hauling 'em in, and posting you and all your cronies on our very own Wanted page. Styling tips? Check out these glamour-pusses:http://picsdigger.com/image/f57fb464/ And what an almighty army we have too, this will be one magnificent and glorious 3-day books, booze and boogie-woogie extravaganza - check out the line-up! AUTHORS & POETS: SARA STOCKBRIDGE; AMBER MARKS; RAY SHELL; SALENA GODDEN; AMAH-ROSE MCKNIGHT; DAVID J; NIALL O'SULLIVAN; KATE TEMPEST; XAVIER LERET; OLI SPLEEN; KIM SHERWOOD; NIKESH SHUKLA; STUART EVERS; MOLDEVIANT; KAREN HAYLEY LIVE MUSIC: THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE BAND FEATURING THE NEW YORK CHIC OF MS MAX DORAY & THE LEGENDARY COBALT STARGAZER SUPER STARRING: JONT; LISA LORE; CLAIRE NICOLSON; TRASHMONEY; PINK NARCISSUS; ORLANDO SEALE; KATE DAISY GRANT; MOUSTACHE MAN; CENTRAL RESERVATION SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCES FROM: DELIRIUM TREMENS, SOUND OF RUM AND FRAN & JOSH DJ's: CARBO & HYDRATE; DJ REDMAN; BORIS MCNABB; MATT GROSS; DJ ZION BRU FILM & VISUALS: SALLY DUNBAR THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE's SPEAKEASY LOUNGE MENU! SCARFACE! THE AL CAPONE SPECIAL Friday Nights Grand Opening / 7pm - 3am MA BARKER’S SAFE HOUSE Saturday Afternoon's Daylight Robbery / 12pm - 7pm THE JOHN DILLINGER SUITE Saturdays Night Watch / 7pm - 3am DON’T WAKE THE BABY! BABY FACE NELSON’s SUNDAY SESSION The Book Club Boutique's hide out & lay low / 12pm - 7pm BLOW THE SAFE! THE BONNIE & CLYDE GRAND FINALE’ The BCB fifty-bullet bust! All-Star Super Jam / 7pm - midnight THE J EDGAR HOOVER-UP - We Get Busted! Get out of there before the dawn raid! get your documents and mission papers here: http://www.standon-calling.com/tag/the-bookclub-boutique/ see you in the trenches, love.life.live.long.alive-o The General

THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE WEDDING!

2010-06-28T09:22:00.001-07:00

THE HOUSE OF ST BARNABAS, 1 GREEK STREET, SOHO. FRIDAY JULY 2ND, 7PM. We invite you to: GET HITCHED! GET COMMITTED! A marriage of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie! Dress Code: Strait Jackets / Top Hats & Wedding Dresses / A Ball and Chain. Starring: MELISSA MANN. ROBERT AUTON. CURIOUS.STUART EVERS. TONY WHITE. MALCOM BENNETT Plus we'll hear from our very own... MICHAEL CURRAN of Tangerine Press and DWANG 2 superstars: JENNI FAGAN. JOE RIDGWELL. THE DERZ PLUS live music from goddess poetess singer songwriter: LISA LORE and BCB favourite the wonderful CLAIRE NICOLSON Hosted by Yours Generally, SALENA GODDEN Starring the New York chic of Ms MAX DORAY and the legendary COBALT STARGAZER in THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE BAND! You will be welcomed into the wedding party with a FREE speciality GET COMMITTED cocktail. The actual (mock) wedding will be held by our very own Reverend Major Max Doray. There will be deliveries of tongue-in-cheek wedding tomfoolery. Expect brilliant bad best man and impromptu additions to the bill with some wild objections. There will be a plethora of poetry, songs and stories on themes of mad mad mad love, that crazy thing called love...love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like... Our special guest publisher for this event is the brilliant TANGERINE PRESS to celebrate the issue of DWANG 2 out now! Dwang 2 features: Fred Voss, Billy Childish, Gerald Locklin, Salena Godden, K.V. Skene, M.J. Duggan, Joseph Ridgwell, Adelle Stripe, Rob Plath, Ben Myers, K.M. Dersley, A.D. Winans, Charles Plymell, Jim Burns....and many, many others! http://www.eatmytangerine.com/dwang.html "It's a nice day to start again, come on, It's a nice day for a white wedding, It's a nice day to start again...." £6 for BCB members with membership cards £6 for HOSB members £8 for newcomers *not only are you supporting great books, artists and writers, you are helping the local Soho homeless with a percentage of entry fee going to the HOSB charity!

THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE RETURNS TO SOHO! LAUNCH OF NEW SUMMER RESIDENCY AT QSOHO!

2010-05-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

THE BCB RETURNS TO SOHO WITH A NEW RESIDENCY AT QSOHO. 7PM. JUNE 1ST. QSOHO, HOUSE OF ST BARNABUS 1 GREEK ST, CORNER OF SOHO SQUARE, BE THERE! THEME: WAYWARD WOMEN DRESS CODE: Mae West & Vivienne Westwood. High Heels & No Knickers. We are pleased to announce that THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE has secured a new Soho base with a new monthly residency, taking our special brand of Books, Booze and Boogie-Woogie to The House Of St Barnabus, QSoho, 1 Greek Street, right in the pumping heart of Soho. We launch our summer series at 7pm on June 1st with the theme WAYWARD WOMEN and launch with an all-female line-up of outspoken, outlandish and outsider writers, authors, poets and musicians. STELLA DUFFY will read from her brand new 12th novel and first historical fiction. 'Theodora, Actress. Empress. Whore.' Published by Virago and out on June 3rd. “From Constantinople Hippodrome whore to Egyptian desert epiphany to Empress of Rome - 1500 years ago Theodora outdid Madonna in performance, Diana in sainted celebrity, and Sinead O'Connor in horrified headlines.” We are thrilled to be hosting readings from BCB favourite bad ass ladies, brilliant authors AMBER MARKS, SARA STOCKBRIDGE and LOUISA YOUNG and also a reading from rocky guitarist of the uber-cool band Trash Money, MOLLY DOOLITTLE and poetry from the wonderful AMAH-ROSE MCKNIGHT too! We will hear from left-wing feminist MP and acclaimed journalist SUZANNE MOORE too. Plus there will be live music from the wonderfully dark and delicious DELIRIUM TREMENS and the quirky and lovable KATE DAISY GRANT. With wicked new work written just for the night, your host will be SALENA GODDEN with the ultimate wayward woman MAX DORAY and THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE BAND. The live performances will take place in the chapel, offering wonderful acoustics, cushioned alcoves under stained glass windows. And there is a leafy courtyard, a secret garden to smoke and sip cocktails and meet up with your fellow Boutiquers. Overlooking this, we have the garden room, where we will have the bar serving delightful drinkys, where you can peruse the book table whilst the brilliant BCB DJ’s play a wicked and wayward soundtrack to a film montage by our resident visual artist SALLY DUNBAR. Upon arrival you will be served with a tasty concoction, this summer's Book Club Boutique signature cocktail beverage...all will be revealed on the night and created by the QSoho team at The House of Wayward Women! The House of St Barnabas has been working in partnership with Quintessentially to launch one of London's most exciting charitable ventures. Recently the House underwent an intense period of renovation and redecoration, in order to restore the building to its original Georgian glory. Since then, The House of St Barnabas has hosted Quintessentially Soho - a not-for-profit charitable members' lounge and events space, aimed at raising funds for The House of St Barnabas Charity and The Quintessentially Foundation. The partnership looks to alleviate the problems associated with homelessness in London, and to help improve the health and education of disadvantaged people and communities worldwide. "The Boutique is the bomb: It's not as much as on the grapevine as the entire vineyard." LEMN SISSAY “The Book Club Boutique is single handedly bringing the literary salon back to its gloriously pissed-up Soho-basement roots.” DAZED & CONFUSED MAGAZINE "Salena Godden — The Mae West madam of the salon” THE SUNDAY TIMES Note: We have one more superstar act still to confirm and further details to come...a percentage of your entry fee will go to THE HOUSE OF ST BARNABUS charity too! Find links to any of the above BELOW and on our group page, band sites...and watch our twitbookspace...as we are watching yours!

LETTER FROM ARVON: TOP SECRET S.O.S THE GENERAL / MAY 2010

2010-05-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

LETTER FROM ARVON: TOP SECRET S.O.S THE GENERAL / MAY 2010 Good Morning Troops! Hello can you hear me? Bleeeep! This is The General, Hello General calling England Town? Hello! Hello? Book Club Boutiquers can thee hear I and I? Hello!? They have caught me again, Arvon, this time I and I is being held captive at the concentration camp in Devon, bloody isolated, miles from civilisation or pub, the silence is deafening. As you know I am no stranger to war and love and all is fair... just as it was last summer at The Hurst - The John Osborne Centre – they too have a torturous continual recording of twittering birdsong playing from hidden speakers in the hedges. Tweet tweet go the birds but I can see right through them. And there are herds of cardboard cows in the distant fields. But The General, as you well know, is not so easily fooled! There is no phone signal nor internet and so I am sending this via a bribe to a native here. The General, I and I, had to do unspeakable things to get access to this line to the outside and I do hope you can hear me. Please pass this word on to all parties concerned, all the troops and citizens of BCBoutique - although understand you do this at your own peril! Beware and have stealth and the Queens own thumbs up you. As I type this, right now, they are playing a soundtrack of rain, soft and constant, and there is a lavender mist lining the woodland on the edge of what I imagine to be the Dartmoor. And also as I type this I plan my escape, waiting for a opportune moment to make the break for it. Perhaps I could find my way by foot to Jamaica Inn or some such place. If only I could steal a torch and a brolly, I believe I could make it to the Cornwall in a week and find some respite or pub, but I know allowing myself to have these thoughts is a fools paradise. The author and scriptwriter JEREMY SHELDON is also captive here, we harbour some hope, but have little faith of freedom, memories of the outside world fade somewhat. We alternate workshops and this seems to keep us all on our toes. We are forced to eat lovely meals they prepare for us daily. Although one knows they are lulling us into a false sense of security and fattening us up for slaughter. Every morning we breakfast, and then sit at a long table with notebooks, studying and scribbling things - it is un-nerving to say the least. During these tortures they seem to think one knows something about books, booze and boogie-woogie but I keep shtum. I bid them to write, to write poetry and prose and ask them to read it aloud to each other and so far this seems to keep them distracted. I have made secret notes that I keep well hidden beneath my mattress. It occurs to me that this is a safe haven for real books. There are books here from before the war, before the invasion, books from the outside. I have been reading the two O’Connor’s, Frank and Flannery, in my what-shall-we-call-it ‘free’ time, but I know I’m being observed, that the cameras and the electric fences keep me here for a reason: the books, booze and the boogie-woogie. Each afternoon I am interrogated on a one-to-one basis. They take it in turns to come to talk to me in a small library room at the top of the main building. This room is filled with copies of books by you all, real books, made with paper from trees. In this library I spotted my friends, dear friends, you are there, Maggie Gee and Lemn Sissay, Stella Duffy and Sir Brian Patten and that Apples and Snakes VELOCITY anthology so many of us are all named in...I cannot help but think it was those 20th century anthologies and old skool fanzines that got us in this damnable trouble in the first place. Nevertheless, it seems I am permitted in this library whenever I please and these books have brought me great comfort in my confines. There is light at the end of the tunnel, last night, most cleverly JOE DUNTHORNE sneaked in under the genius disguise of ‘guest speaker’ My eyes could not believe themselves that he fooled them all so brilliantly. He read beautifully from his wonderful novel SUBMARINE. He also read from a new poetry collection which is out today, this very day in May with FABER publishings. Boutiquers, if you can find a real booksellers, you must seek it out. Joe also brought bright word from the outside - that the HOMEWORK series of monthly live events starts this month with the Aisle 16 fellows in the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. This brought me great happiness and with fresh hope I now look forward to breaking out of here and witnessing some of these miracles of which he speaks. Long live books, booze and boogie-woogie! Sadly, however, this morning Joe Dunthorne was already gone at dawn. I heard some screams, I heard some cattle, I heard the screech of tyres and I will say no more. I saw nothing, in fact, there is no evidence of his ever being here less a copy of 'Submarine' placed in the library with my other friends. Let me take this opportunity to tell you, he, Joe Dunthorne, was so brave, a brave soldier to come here, a warrior in fact and let us never forget that. Deep down I harbour a hope that he has escaped on the locomotive engines to England Town - but I won’t kid myself until I see it with my own eyes. At night I barely sleep suffering the most terrible torments. These nightmares are a nightmare. Memories of books, booze and boogie-woogie ravage my mind and vibrate in my very soul. I wake up screaming ‘I SAY BOOK CLUB AND YOU SAY…BOUTIQUE” It doesn’t help that this prison is haunted by long ago authors, the Ted Hughes and the Philip Larkin types, carousing and bantering in the lofts and arbours. Their ghosts play football with the severed heads of jobbing writers, waving bloodied workshop notes in my face and caterwauling lesson plans through the gaps in the woodwork and doorframes. Blue cheese and stilton at midnight do little to stop these carry-ons. I will end with correspondence with an up as they say and the best news of all - I have heard word that on JUNE 1ST 2010 The Book Club Boutique will march valiantly back into the SOHO with a new summer season, a series of assaults which will take place monthly in the pumping aorta of the heart of England Town. That’s a whole new residency and a new venue for the summer season. Therein we will expect to find the finest examples of exemplary authors, the most wonderful and wild poets and the most inspiring musicians all performing live for our own eyes and ears and hearts, alongside DJ’s in a pretty bar and a garden to sip cocktails in... I cannot tell you anymore now for walls have ears and ears have eyes and legs have tables...but I cannot tell you enough how happy this news makes me and as soon as I break out of here I will announce the location and line-up for the first battalion to go up over the trenches upon my return to the England Town. I ask for you to just remember this part: JUNE 1ST 7PM. BCB. SOHO and then set fire to your lap top. Now I bid you well, the lion sleeps tonight, in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. May the spirit of BCB be with you all. May the books, the booze and the boogie-woogie rise and rise. Now do wish me luck dearhearts and fellow citizens of BCB, there is a good chance I will have to crawl on my belly commando style across marsh and moor to get to you, but by Jove it will be worth every stinging nettle and cowpat. love.life.live.long.alive-o! Yours Most Generally The General

A TRANSMISSION FROM YOUR GENERAL UPON AN APRIL MORN

2010-04-24T03:43:00.002-07:00

Good Morning BCB troops, good morning indeed, upon this fine April morn in the year of our lord twenty ten upon the green, green land of England Town, Now, I do hope you can all hear this missive as it is being dictated aloud and typed live on air by my kind doctor who has the nerve for such things, Good morning, Oh i already did say that, now where was I, ah yes, April and the troops... Dear troops, It is still April! Hurrah, I keep thinking i is later in the life of loving long and living life alive, but i am mistaken, for we are still young and it is still spring. Summer is not here yet, this section is named spring, because of the spring it puts in your step and the bounce in your bed and the curl in your tail, but before we know it, summers frightful war will be upon us and we will need to be prepared, armed and forewarned, with strawberries and fizzy drinks, ready for battle upon the beer tents and trenches of frenzied and fried festivality, I was in the bunker yesterday for secret mission talks. Viewing site maps and overhead plans for the STANDON CALLING festival, whereupon twas remarked that the troops had not heard word from the General for quite a while and that it might rouse morale. So, Well, Here i am, your General at your service and i can tell you, the organisationals for STANDON CALLING festival go swimmingly, i confirm that on the weekend of our lordy AUGUST 6-9TH the BCB will be at the lush green fields of Standon with the BCB's own stage and bar area, that's 72 hours, 3 days of programming and hosting BCB at STANDON CALLING..our line-ups to be announced shortly! All BCB Festival news will be updated as it comes in and can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113099038722657&ref=search&sid=627782451.1785200847..1 From the BCB Fortress, the doctor has alerted me that as a BCB army we are over two thousand fold! Perusing the profile images i see so many new faces! So many sexy faces, kissable faces, cheeky cheeky faces, hauntingly beautiful faces, mysteriously alluring faces, take-me-roughly faces and god damn it i am grown up and demand fun faces - and i take this opportunity to welcome you to the Book Club Boutique, you are in the right place and you are welcome in this, the home of all things books, booze and boogie-woogie. Currently the General, which is me, writes to you from the BCB fortress where i am generally in hiding for the month of April. There is much to do, I have been making headway on new writings, filling in applications, writing proposals, editing and completing my first year working for FIRST STORY charity and booking the summers festivals and missions. I have also been rehearsing my bayonnet and growing my own tomatoes. I planted some forget-me-knots lest we forget, amen... Here it is so peaceful in peacetime, the silence of planes overhead has been quite eerie, volcanic ash? did you see what we did there? yes, quite, but the volcano was the only way, there was no other way, you have to make these kind of decisions sometimes and God and Queen knows it was the best shot we had, it was the volcano or else - and we send best of British luck to all and hope they get home to their families and homesteads soon. Each morning the doctor draws my bath, brings me my tea and then reads to me a selection of your correspondemails - Thank you! Such warm responses have been pertaining to the wireless transmissions on the BBC Radio 4's 'Saturday Live' its always a great challenge to write poetry within the time limit and within the themes, keeps your noodles on their toes and your toes in the noodles so to speak....In fact, as i write this, i am tuned in, hearing Wing Commander Luke Wright in action - jolly bloody good show old boy! Did you know Luke Wright has his own imprint NASTY LITTLE PRESS and that there will be a slim copy of my very own poems published by aforementioned publishers next year. Later this summer we will also see a collection of my short fictions published by the uber-hip Trolley Books too. As for the memoir 'Springfield Road' we have no idea what the Gods intend for the publishing of that work. I can only thank you for all your kindnesses when i did read from it at the last BCB at Blacks, the memory and memoir event, that was terrific and i appreciate your comments. Maggie Gee and Ray Shell and Hannah Pool and Bloodaxe and all that performed I salute thee! I also salute the crew of WIYART and MERCY for that wonderful event at Shoreditch Church earlier this month, it is always a thrill to be on the bill alongside the divine David J, Nathan Jones and Ross Sutherland and the likes. When will we return to Soho? Ah yes, thank you doctor, i forgot that question, this is the burning question, this is the one i be asked a great many times a day, when will BCB return to Soho? Well - the short answer is very soon...We have something up our sleeves, a place in Sohemia, where books, booze and boogie-woogie will occur, perhaps monthly, throughout the summer. It is perfect, darling, there is a stage for the performings, and decks for the vinyl appreciations and a bar and the bar has many drinks like gin and vodka and wine and beer and ice cubes...but not vodka ice-cubes i am afraid they are only available here in the BCB fortress. Oh yes, thank you doctor, The Book Club Boutique newspaper, it is currently being edited...it is taking longer than expected, seeking funding, but rest assured all submitted work most excellent..watch this space! The doctor is so kind, the staff here are wonderful, very accommodating...but now i must bid you adieu and water my rocket seedlings and talk to my tomato plants. Today is a brave new spring day for all, it is still April and it is still today, the doctor has assured me it is still today - but we all know tomorrow there will be tent, there will be hay bale, there will cider and there will be men in bright green and orange waistcoats asking 'wristband?' 'wristband?' and we will swerve them and climb commando style through the hedges to pee, and they will chase us saying 'wristband?" 'wristband!' and we will not know of what they speak and run freely among the cabbages and chai tea cup cake stalls to the dawn chorus of loving-living-lively-alive-o! The doctor will now attach a list below of some of the aforementioned links and other places of interest you might like to visit during your time on the interwebage. toodle pip! doctor thank you for your typings now peel me a grape and massage my bayonnet arm it aches like bugger... love.life.live.long.alive-o Yours Sincerely and Generally, General G xxx * First Story fosters creativity, literacy and talent in young British students by supporting acclaimed authors to run creative writing projects in schools. www.firststory.co.uk * So we can all spot each other in the frenzy of festival life we have launched our own brand of luxury Book Club Boutique goods; T-shirts, hooded tops, mugs, aprons for the messes and book bags here: http://www.zazzle.co.uk/bookclubboutique * Adopt a Word? It's a great campaign, for the I-CAN charity giving individuals the opportunity to buy and exclusively own a piece of the English language - see www.adoptaword.com * Nasty Little Press brings you new work from poets best known for their live performances. Pamphlets already available from Luke Wright and John Osborne: www.nastylittlepress.org *Trolley Books is an award winning independent UK publisher of brilliant art and photography books: www.trolleybooks.com * MERCY & WIYRT www.mercyonline.co.uk ...now doctor, darling, please, peel me a grape and massage my bayonnet arm it aches like buggery...