Morecambe Poetry Festival: Salena Godden and Henry Normal

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage. Her work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC Radio, TV and film and she consistently features at international book and poetry festivals. Two poetry collections Pessimism is for Lightweights: 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistance and With Love, Grief and Fury, which was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards and received a Special Commendation from The Poetry Book Society. A full live performance from With Love, Grief and Fury was broadcast on BBC’s The Verb and chosen for Pick of The Week.

Her poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. Recent performances of protest poems While Justice Waits and Dirty Old Men were Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. Notably her work has also been shortlisted for the 4thWrite Short Story Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, Jerwood Compton Foundation and the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her poetry and fiction has been added to the GSCE school syllabus and the Open University.

Salena Godden is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex. 

Henry Normal: 

Jokes, stories and poetry from Radio 4's reticent poet, writer and TV and Film producer Henry Normal. A new fun packed show featuring his latest collection ‘Collected Poems and other landfill’, "Not heard anything that jumps from hilarious to moving in such an intelligent, subtle way as Henry Normal's show" - Radio Times

Henry is a writer, poet, TV & Film producer, founder of the Manchester Poetry Festival (now the Literature festival) and co-founder of the Nottingham Poetry Festival.

In June 2017 he was honoured with a special BAFTA for services to Television.

He co-wrote and script edited the multi-award winning Mrs Merton show and the spin off series Mrs Merton and Malcolm. He also co-created and co-wrote the first series of The Royle Family.

With Steve Coogan he co-wrote the BAFTA winning Paul and Pauline Calf Video Diaries, Coogan's Run, Tony Ferrino, Doctor Terrible and all three of Steve's live tours and the film The Parole Officer.

Setting up Baby Cow Productions Ltd in 1990, Henry Executive Produced all and script edited many of the shows of it's 17 and a half year output during his tenure as MD.

Highlights of the Baby Cow output during his time include the Oscar nominated film Philomena, I believe in Miracles, Gavin and Stacey, Moone Boy, Uncle, Marion and Geof, Nighty Night, The Mighty Boosh, Red Dwarf, Hunderby, Camping and Alan Partridge.

Since retiring in April 2016, Henry has written and performed 10 x BBC Radio 4 shows combining comedy, poetry and stories about family. His 11th BBC Radio 4 show 'A Normal Journey' will be recorded this autumn.