LIVEwire Poetry

Now then! We’re visiting Hull for one night only, as we present this very special event starring Salena Godden at Wrecking Ball Arts Centre. Salena will be joined by two of Yorkshire’s finest in Vicky Foster and Matt Abbott.

Tickets are Pay As You Feel (£6, £8, £10) and are on sale here.

Salena Godden

Salena Godden is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage based in London. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death 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.

Salena’s work has been shortlisted for the 4thWrite short story prize and the Ted Hughes Prize, and has been widely anthologised and broadcast on radio, TV and film. Her poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. She was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.

Her brand-new poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury is available here on Canongate Books.

Vicky Foster

Vicky Foster is an award-winning writer, performer and poet who has broadcast extensively across the BBC. She has published two collections of writing and her memoir is due for release in 2024. She is also studying for a PhD in English and Creative Writing. She won The Society of Authors’ Imison Award at the 2020 BBC Audio Drama Awards for her Radio 4 play Bathwater, and her Radio 4 documentary, Can I Talk About Heroes? was reviewed in the national media.

She has written poetry for radio, podcast and TV, delivered writing projects and creative writing workshops for a wide range of organisations, and performed at festivals and events across the North. She is a writer-in-residence for First Story, working with schools to help young people tell their own stories.

Matt Abbott

Matt Abbott is a Wakefield-born poet, educator, and activist. His debut solo show Two Little Ducks earned a string of 5* reviews at Edinburgh Fringe 2017 and on a 2018 UK theatre tour. The show’s poems – exploring working-class support for Brexit and his experiences volunteering at the Calais Jungle refugee camp – were published by Verve in 2018.

Matt’s debut kids’ poetry collection A Hurricane in my Head was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. He was recently longlisted for The Poetry Society’s prestigious National Poetry Competition and has had work translated into Arabic for The New Arab. Matt is also known for fronting indie band Skint & Demoralised.