Welcome to The Live Poetry Book Club, an evening summer book club exploring and celebrating live readings and performances from writers and artists of colour.
For those who love nothing more than reading a good book (ones that move us and inspire us and allow us to see the world differently) and for those who adore listening to a writer bring their work into being through performance, at each of these unique events we will listen to a musician perform, to the poet read their work in person, and then take their collections home to enjoy afterwards.
On 1st September we welcome Salena Godden. Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage based in London. Her debut novel, Mrs Death Misses Death was published by Canongate, it won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.
A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 pieces of courage and resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in 2023. The title poem is on permanent display at The Peoples History Museum in Manchester. A new full poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury and literary childhood memoir Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited were published with Canongate in 2024.
Salena Godden has grown to become one of Britain’s foremost poets whose electrifying live performances have earned her a devoted following. Her work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC radio, TV and film. Her work has beenshortlisted for the 4thWrite Short Story Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, Jerwood Compton Foundation, Bridport Poetry Prize and highly commended by the Forward Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex.
Salena is currently working on The Life Of Life a second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe, it will be published by Canongate in 2026.
We will also be joined by a musician who will be performing a set to warm you up for Salena's work. Check back here for details on them once they have been revealed.
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. You can book now via the ticket link on this page.
So come, one and all, join us at the BRLSI for this final very special evening of language.
Tickets are just £5 and include a free poetry book of the writer's work and free refreshments.
Children and babies welcome, but please be aware content won't be censored and may not be age appropriate.
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EMBLAZE illuminates powerful stories. They are an imprint of Bath Spa University's Paper Nations, celebrating the talent and creativity of writers of colour and rural writers across the South West by nurturing inclusive communities and providing support to help their voices shine.
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