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SUMMARY:Sandy Arse: Poetry Celebrating the Seaside
UID:20260912-sandy-arse-poetry-celebrating-the-seaside@tourist.org.uk
STATUS:CONFIRMED
DTSTART:20260912T183000Z
DTEND:20260912T210000Z
LOCATION:Studio 27, White Rock Theatre, White Rock, Hastings, East Sussex, TN341JX, United Kingdom
DESCRIPTION:Sandy Arse is a collection of poetry celebrating the seaside. Published by Paper Boat, twenty of the most exciting poets in Britain today write about waves, sand, unrequited love, ice-cream and sandy arses.\n\nSpecial seaside poems from poets including Luke Kennard, Henry Normal, Salena Godden, John Osborne and Tim Barlow, among other seasidey poets.\n\nThis Sandy Arse event will include poets from the collection as well as a celebration of poetry from the seaside.  Plus special performances from our Sandy Arse poetry competition winners.\n\nLuke Kennard\n\nLuke is a renowned poet, critic, novelist and lecturer. His poetry collection Notes on the Sonnets won the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection.\n\n\nLuke won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 for his first poetry collection The Solex Brothers. His second collection, The Harbour Beyond The Movie, was shortlisted for the 2007 Forward Prize for Best Collection, making him the youngest ever poet to be nominated. In 2014, he was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation Poets.  His debut novel, The Transition, was published by Fourth Estate and was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime.’\n\n\nHenry Normal\n\nHenry 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.\n\n​\n\nIn 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 also co-created and co-wrote the first series of The Royle Family. \n\n \n\nIn 1990, Henry set up Baby Cow Productions Ltd and Executive Produced all, and script edited many of the shows of it's 17 and a half year output -including the Oscar nominated film Philomena, Gavin and Stacey, Nighty Night, The Mighty Boosh, and Alan Partridge.\n\n​\n\nSince retiring in April 2016, Henry has written and performed numerous BBC Radio 4 shows combining comedy, poetry and stories about family. \n\nBorn in St Anne's, Nottingham in 1956, Henry now lives in Fairlight with his wife and screenwriter Angela Pell (Close to Me, Snowcake) and their son Johnny.\n\n​\n\nHenry performs poetry at Literature Festivals around the UK and has published more than a dozen poetry books. He was recently given an honourary doctorate of letters by Nottingham Trent University, another by Nottingham University and has a beer and a bus named after him in Nottingham!\n\n\nSalena Godden\n\nSalena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage. \n\n \n\nShe is now based in London but was born and grew up in Hastings and maintains close links with the town.\n\n​\n\nHer debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize. It was also shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Film and TV rights for Mrs Death Misses Death have been optioned by Idris Elba’s production company, Green Door Pictures.\n\n \n\nHer work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC radio, TV and film.\n\n \n\nShe was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022. \n\n\nA new hardback edition ofPessimism is for Lightweights – 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistancewas published by Rough Trade Books in February 2023 and the poemPessimism is for Lightweightsis on permanent display at The  Peoples History Museum, Manchester.\n\n​\n\nSalena has signed a 3-book deal with Canongate and is currently working on a literary memoir, a poetry collection and an eagerly anticipated second novel set in the 'Mrs Death Misses Death' universe. All three books are due for publication in 2024 and 2025.\n\n\nJohn Osborne\n\nJohn Osborne writes poems, scripts and stories and now publishes books … this is his first venture as one half of Paper Boat, along with Katie Cooper. Their first anthology, Sandy Arse, is a celebration of the British seaside, with twenty of the best poets working today contributing their own seaside poems. This launch, with some of the poets featured in the anthology, in one of the greatest seaside towns in the world, will be everything you want from a seaside outing, no matter what the weather.\n\n\n'John's story left me and my children spellbound and in tears' \n\nStewart Lee about John's Radio 4 show Don't Need The Sunshine, a show about the British seaside.\n\n'A lovely, engaging writer finding the joyous everyday, and as charming and unpredictable as the British seaside itself' \n\nStuart Maconie\n\n\nTim Barlow \n\nTim Barlow is a performance poet and writer. His collection of poetry The Manufactured Thrill was published by Manchester's Flapjack Press in 2026. He regularly performs at spoken word events in Hastings and further afield, and hosts a popular monthly poetry open mic evening – A Load of Poets – in Hastings. In 2024 Tim won the Festival's annual open mic poetry competition, and has supported the BAFTA-winning poet and writer Henry Normal (a patron of the Festival) on a poetry tour of all seventeen public libraries in East Sussex. Tim was one of the organisers of the Book Festival Fringe in 2024 and 2025. He is also Chair of Hastings Writers Group and won their Writer of the Year trophy in 2025. He has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Hull University and works for a living as a law librarian. Born and bred in Derbyshire, he now lives on the West Hill in Hastings.
URL;VALUE=URI:https://hastingssussex.uk/events/festivals-and-carnivals/hastings-book-festival/sandy-arse-poetry-celebrating-the-seaside/
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