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Called to the bar: Salena’s poetry is about the night before the morning after |
Poetry of the self: it’s in the way you tell it
Punk poet and singer Salena Godden is familiar with life on stage, but she is about to turn the spotlight on herself like never before in an eagerly awaited
autobiography, writes Dan Carrier
Springfield Road
Harper Press. To be published in the Spring
AN unquenchable thirst for fun is a major subject of Salena Godden’s barnstorming poetry: it’s literary hedonism, tackling the night before the morning after.
But while the poet, who lives in Dartmouth Park, entertains with her performances of poems about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in all its tainted glory, her next project promises to be a little more sober.
Salena has recently handed over the manuscript for her memoirs, and the 36-year-old’s autobiography of a childhood in Hastings is eagerly anticipated.
While Salena has made a name as a punk poet, the lead singer of ska-break-beat band SaltPeter and lyrical party woman, the book, titled Springfield Road, is more sober. Due out in the spring, it tells Salena’s story – including the effect the suicide of her father, who hanged himself when she was young – had on her childhood.
The idea for a memoir came about when she was approached by a literary agent who had heard her poetry. It prompted a bidding war between publishers – “I did a chapter and it went a bit bananas,” she admits.
She wonders if writing is somehow in the genes: her father was a jazz musician and poet and while researching her memoir she discovered she had a sister in Bristol.
“It was incredible how alike we are: there are two of me! We both like dirty jokes, books and writing,” she says. “By seeking the dead, I found the living. It was amazing.”
Salena admits the hoo-ha of getting a book deal was daunting and is worried about how it will be received. But she got the nod from the person she says matters most – her mother read it before it was despatched to the publishers.
“She loved it,” says Salena. “I have been honest in how I have described stuff. My mum is quite mad at times, so I have described her like that, but she didn’t mind – when my mum gets crazy, the Hoover gets it.”
Memoir is new ground for her. During her 16-odd years on the performance poetry circuit, which has taken her round the world, she has not directly tackled her background.
“My poetry is about cervical smears and one-night stands,” she says. “I’d never written nor really spoken about my father. It was hard to get started. I did not have a particularly happy, or unhappy, childhood – but what is important is the way you tell it.”
Memoir is another string to a bow that boasts short-story writing – she is a favourite among cult magazine editors – as well as the poetry that has made her name, and fronting her band.
She has worked with names such as Ninja Tunes, Coldcut and Alabama Three and, like her poetry, SaltPeter’s songs recreate a London Noir.
The band’s music is reminiscent of The Blockheads – it has a Camden twang you can jump around to, while Selena’s poetic sensibility brings a dreary world of late nights brilliantly to life.
Salena describes their 2007 album The Best Sauce as “the belly-rumbling of the skint, the scam, and the walk of shame, the morning after the night before and the fear of the night after that. Saunter with us through seven-day benders; laugh at one-night stands. It’s the overheard conversation in the pub toilets; it’s a wink and a nudge, slap-and-tickle commentary of London nightlife.”
Poetry has always walked hand in hand with Salena. Before she took to the stage to share her humour and lyricism, her wordsmithery already paid dividends: “People asked me to write poems for them at school,” she remembers. “I charged two Benson and Hedges for a ditty that said: Steve, will you go out with me?”
She first performed poetry when she was 20, after moving to London from Hastings to work doing A&R for Acid Jazz records. This led to her blagging a spot at punk gigs as a warm-up act and the crowds loved her boozy, dirty and above all honest take on her life.
“I’d warm them up: it was mucky poems for punks,” she recalls.
At the time spoken-word gigs were finding fresh impetus. She joined writers like Irvine Welsh, Will Self and Howard Marks on stage. “I was the token girl,” she laughs.
And there are more books to come (“As long as I haven’t f***** up Springfield Road,” she says, expressing a touch of self-doubt as to how it will be received). There are four hidden under the bed, which could be dug out – but she has many more upstairs in her head, waiting to be unleashed, she says.
In the mean time, she’ll continue feeding her fans with poems that are mini epics themselves.
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