Speaking with Salena: Capturing Society, Windrush and Identity Through The Art of Words

Salena Golden (Image via BBC Radio 4)

Keeping in conversation with the theme of Windrush, I had a great opportunity to pose questions to multi-talented Salena Godden: a poet, author, activist and broadcaster. She details her journey through creativity and how navigating identity, having diverse heritage including Jamaican intertwines with modern and historical contexts, feeding into the artistic process. Currently in her third decade producing work, her publications include poetry, literary childhood memoir, studio albums and writing for BBC TV and radio just to name a few, not to mention powerful live poetry performances.

Charlene: How did your interest in poetry begin and when did you realise it was what you wished to pursue?

Salena: Hello there! I have always been interested in books, storytelling, poetry and prose, the shape of words, the marriage of lyrics and feeling and language and rhythm. I remember I was keen to learn to read and write. I remember three objects from my childhood that meant a certain freedom to me: my library card and my bike and my tape recorder. These three items took up most of my time and imagination. Reading books and escaping into other worlds. Riding my bike and making adventures and stories on my bike. And recording radio shows and songs into my tape recorder. I loved to record things, make up plays, stories and songs and record them. I moved to London when I was 19, back then I guess I dreamt I would be a pop star, like Neneh Cherry or Poly Styrene in X-Ray Specs, they looked like me and were huge heroes. In the nineties, I wrote more music and I pursued record deals and did regular performances and live shows with DJ’s and drum and bass tracks and also our band called ‘SaltPeter’ with my friend the composer Peter Coyte. Publishing seemed really closed, I mean, it seemed so hard to get an actual real book published.  I got lots of rejection letters and knock backs, but collaborating with musicians and poetry and performance seemed an easier path. Go where the love is!

In those early days I met the late great poet Jock Scot and it was Jock that got me my first gig and invited me to readings. Jock introduced me to the scene and the work of Ian Dury and The Blockheads and The Pogues and John Cooper Clarke and I soon discovered Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah and all those greats and got hooked in. Soon I was gigging and sharing stages with Tim Wells, Roger Robinson, Murray Lachlan Young, Joelle Taylor, Zena Edwards, Patience Agbabi and so many others. The nineties and early 2000’s were a buzz of pub gigs and parties and industrious DIY activity. I remember producing a series of 'Saline Trips’ zines, SaltPeter albums on CD’s, doing gigs every night and making radio shows for Resonance FM. My first mainstream break was recording and touring some poetry for Coldcut and Ninja Tunes in the late nineties for the Let Us Play albums, that was a phenomenal experience for a young poet. The first time I was published in a real book was thanks to Lemn Sissay and The Fire People and Canongate. I am very excited to have just signed a 3-book deal with Canongate now, it’s a full circle, magic moment. It all grew from these moments of being bold and brave, of being encouraged, of experimenting with ideas, sharing new work live on stage, performing in raucous clubs and smoky pubs and at punk gigs and raves and warehouse parties. My very early work was so hardcore - I still stand by it though. I recall the rooms it was performed in and how I would scream these feminist anti-racist rants at a room of blokes, poets sloshing pints and jeering punks. I loved it and so I kept doing the thing I loved,  I didn’t feel like I was in pursuit of a thing, because I lived in it. I kept living for what I love, writing things, recording things and making things to share, I kept going, going, going… until here we are thirty years later, doing an interview with you. 

Charlene:  Do you feel social media has helped or hindered the poetry world?

Salena: That’s the big question. I feel that an important part of poetry is that it is all about connection and sharing. This question takes me back to the DIY attitude I was talking about in my first answer. In the nineties when we wanted to share poems we had to pull together to put on gigs and events and then post flyers to friends by hand. I mean, know their postal addresses, and then borrow a franking machine from the mate with the office job and post invitations to our gigs or about our new zine or CD. Or go and stand outside other people’s poetry gigs and hand flyers out which was always kinda frowned upon. Now, we make flyers and posters and share them in one click on a social media page and it is done in seconds - shared with the whole world. I guess it’s all the same hustle, just another decade, and on your phone instead of your mailbox. It was more mysterious and anonymous back then. For example; I remember I used to send packets of poems to zines and journals all over the world almost every Friday, and there was a random vibe to that, sometimes they’d reply and you’d be pen pals and you would be so excited to open a parcel and see your poem published in a punk zine in Melbourne or a hippy poetry paper in upstate New York or something. That was and always will be such a buzz to me. I really have always loved that poetry connection and that sharing vibe.

Now in the 2020’s if you are a young new poet, it must very different. Maybe young poets are more career focussed and more distracted by comments and likes and hearts than we were? The Internet can be such a dark place and drains the energy, the internet encourages you to compare your life with others which is not helpful for anyone as we all have such different paths and obstacles. It should be helpful; it could potentially make it easier to find other poets and make friends and valuable connections and feedback. The bottom line is that whatever the decade, poets always find ways to share: words, feelings, observations, politics, anxieties, humanity and love, and that is miraculous - one of the things I love about it. I sometimes miss the post and the letters poets used to write to each other. Poets reaching out across the oceans and time zones to each other via the post and how is that any different now? Has it helped or hindered? Ok. Both. Although, I think it has helped. Anything that helps poets find poets and people who love poetry find poetry books and events is a good thing. We need more poetry; the world needs more poetry. Having a bad day? Read poetry. Whenever in doubt, add more poetry to your day. Bored with your social life? Go to a poetry gig.

Charlene: Taking an excerpt from one of your works, 'history is watching us, silence is complicit, apathy hurts us all,' what are your thoughts on the UK's education and efforts regarding Windrush?

Salena: Those are three separate lines from my poem 'Pessimism is for Lightweights’ - they don’t run in that order and in one verse, I stand by them though: 

History is watching us. Silence is complicit. Apathy hurts us all. 

Looking back I don’t remember being taught a single thing about Windrush or indeed any Black history when I was at school. Everything I learned about Windrush I learned from questioning my grandparents and family and reading in library books for myself and for my own curiosity. I wish it was better now, but I am sure it is not. I wish there was more Black history being taught in school in the UK now and not just as a token gesture for BHM. As I write this, I am remembering we tried to get The Good Immigrant on the school curriculum, we got lots of signatures on that petition. We do need more representation of the Black and Brown British experience. The books, the plays, the poetry, the history, we need to save and support the libraries - we need these books there in the windows and displayed, all of this is so important. You cannot be what you cannot see. 

Charlene: What was your creative process behind the immersive piece you performed for the Windrush 75 Concert?

Salena: I was so honoured and so excited to be asked to perform and write a piece for the Windrush 75 Concert at Royal Albert Hall. I was also very worried and nervous about it as I was not sure what I would say or could say. In poetry there is a delicious way of saying more by saying less. I left London for a bit and went to stay with friends on the coast. I looked at the Devon skies and seas and sun rises and went deep into the poem. My first idea was that I decided I wanted to fill the Royal Albert Hall with the ocean, the sound of the sea, that united feeling that we are all in the same boat, that so many of us all came here by boat, and that we are connected by our bloodlines and saltwater. I wanted to celebrate that we are all sharing the same time in history and also sharing a resilience, a bold beauty and courage. I hoped to fill the Albert Hall with sea water and ancestors and ghosts and ONE Love and our connection in all. Audibly, as I read the poem, we had a soundtrack of the ocean and also a bass line played by Chi Chi of Chineke! Orchestra. Chris Cameron was the musical director. Finally I should mention this: when I received the invitation to do this gig I asked to have a kimono made by artist Diane Goldie with a shimmering picture of ‘Queen Nanny’ on the back and glittering Jamaican flowers, hibiscus and hummingbirds. With the rebel Queen Nanny of the Maroons on my back and my grandmothers beads around my throat, I felt like anything I didn’t get into the poetry was empowered and represented in this way, visually and spiritually.

Charlene:  What impact has having Windrush/Caribbean lineage had on your life journey and identity?

Salena: Empowerment. I love my old blood. I love my DNA. I love my lineage and my ancient family tree. I have grown to love my skin and love my journey and love my mixed identity. Above all of this, I love where I am going all the more, because I know where I am from, and that's an incredible feeling.

Charlene: In a previous interview you spoke of posing the question to younger people in workshops 'who would win in a fight: the comedian, the journalist or the poet,' which I found so interesting as a conversation. How important do you feel engaging the Black British community in the creative arts is?

Salena: Ha! I forgot that. The kids would debate and argue their points and get quite excited. I would tell them how the Comedian is a slave to the laughter and how the Journalist is a slave to the facts. Whereas the Poets use all the tools: laughter and facts, also heart and soul, tears and fiction, metaphor and colour, feeling and dream, and all the other tools and that’s why the poets win in this fight. It was silly really, just a game, a way to get young people to discuss writing forms and see their poetry as powerful, to give them incentive to write poems, to write boldly and use all the creative tools in the box. How important? It isn’t just important, it is vital that we engage and find ways to express and share creativity. Whether it is art, poems, books, music, all artistic and creative expression, it is nourishment, it is empowerment, it is necessary, it is perception, it is integrity, it is voice.

“It is a way to share our path, our song, our truth.”

For more on Salena Godden’s work, view here.