A Writer's Life by John Siddique

The Pig of Happiness

2012-01-01T06:00:00.000Z

Another Day

2011-12-31T06:00:00.000Z

VISION II by beautifulnoise/skin

2011-12-27T20:14:00.002Z

Earth, Air, Fire, Water - What can we do to wake ourselves from the drug of sleep & delusion? How do do stop buying into greed and wake into the tender steps of authenticity in our own lives?

Taken from the album SKYCLAD

Music by beautifulnoise/skin
Film by Chris Robinson
Filmed on Super 8 & Hi8

Silent Night - Waits & Fripp

2011-12-25T18:00:00.000Z

A Place of Silence

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000Z

Read by Abha Gautam

Sometimes we’re so damn stupid

2011-12-24T14:16:00.001Z

Black Trees by Beautifulnoise/skin

2011-12-21T08:18:00.000Z

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://beautifulnoiseskin.bandcamp.com/album/black-trees"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Black Trees by beautifulnoise/skin&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Black Trees is the new album from my musical alter ego beautifulnoise/skin. Recorded over many years, the guitar forms the heart of this lp, and we have had some amazing friends drop by to contribute.

If we did singles 'I Am You' would be out there rocking the airwaves for us, and we'd follow that with our whisky driven version of Hawkwind's 'Children of The Sun.' If it something more thoughtful you're after the progressive suite 'World World World' or the warm but cool title track should touch those deep places.

The solstice is the right day to put this work into the world. Put this on your headphones and enjoy these days of ours. If you can help get the word out by playing, reviewing, gifting this music you would be helping a lot.

BN/S now have a facebook page, please stop by and tell us your thoughts.

Ring Out Solstice Bells

2011-12-21T06:00:00.000Z

'Be In Love With Your Own Life' - Jack Kerouac Quotes

2011-12-20T09:04:00.001Z

While your correspondent is not the biggest Kerouac fan there ever was, he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to the beats for the gifts they gave him of Blake and Whitman, Ginsberg's Howl & Kaddish, and Burroughs' Junky & Cities of The Red Night. Kerouac always seemed to be a drunk to me, making excuses for his addiction - however these lists and the basic tenets of his philosophy do have some truth in them. We have a choice how we live - that much is true, we can walk around in the gloom of capitalism's gasping breaths, or we can find a way to take a breath of our own. I particularly am moved by his quote from this list 'Be In Love With Your Own Life.' To do that for real in these narcissistic times. a Joycean YES.

# Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
# Submissive to everything, open, listening
# Try never get drunk outside yr own house
# Be in love with yr life
# Something that you feel will find its own form
# Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
# Blow as deep as you want to blow
# Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
# The unspeakable visions of the individual
# No time for poetry but exactly what is
# Visionary tics shivering in the chest
# In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
# Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
# Like Proust be an old teahead of time
# Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
# The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
# Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
# Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
# Accept loss forever
# Believe in the holy contour of life
# Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
# Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
# Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
# No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
# Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
# Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
# In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
# Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
# You're a Genius all the time
# Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Nine Drive by Beautifulnoise/skin

2011-12-17T07:09:00.000Z

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://beautifulnoiseskin.bandcamp.com/track/nine-drive"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Nine Drive by beautifulnoise/skin&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
A Few Minutes of Beautiful/NoiseVisit the BN/S Facebook Page

Liu Xiaobo - Your Lifelong Prisoner

2011-12-10T00:30:00.000Z

10th December is International Human Rights Day, so we would like to share with you a poem written by Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo to his wife Liu Xia. Xiaobo is not free to read this work for himself so it falls to the other poets of this world to be a voice for those who are silenced. I recorded this poem as I believe that while any writer is not free to write or be read, then no writer is free.

Xiaobo is in prison in China for 'inciting subversion of state power,' while Xia is under house arrest without charge.

A book of his poems & essays called 'No Enemies, No Hatred' will be published in January 2012.

Note - by writers I mean writers who are writing literature such as fiction, poetry and non-fiction which is not racist or does not promote hatred.

Kindest
John

Elder Moon - 'Freedom or comfort which would you choose?'

2011-12-10T00:00:00.001Z

'Freedom or comfort which would you choose?'

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Animation and Concept by Daniel Spellman
Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

Elder Moon is one of a series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital - An Almanac (Salt). The poems are based on the Full Moons of the year and the Celtic mythology which names each moon after a letter in the ancient tree alphabet. Elder Moon is a Shamanic poem in that it seeks though the meaning of the text and the rhythm of the poetry to create a space in which awareness can evolve and healing can take place.

A Roundup of recent interviews and interest

2011-12-08T10:00:00.000Z

Hello There
we've done pretty well in getting the Full Blood word out there so far this year. Having readers who like to share the treasures of the books they enjoy is something wonderful that I thank the heavens for everyday.

We've collected all the recent online stuff together should you wish to see what some good people out there are saying, and what I have to say for myself in response.
Full Blood now has its own Facebook Page, please stop by.

Online interview on The View From Here:

Full Blood, Modern sexuality in an age of porn, Beauty myths & Nudity

Grace Curtis on becoming a Siddique reader

and the ideas on being human in the books

Online interview for Write Out Loud:

A life in poetry, Full Blood, Being a Bestseller, Having a readership who are not poets

A piece in India's The Tribune:
Full Blood, Travels in search of my father, Being a naked muse.

Five Sentences with Sarah Salway
The poet finishes the novelists lines, in a very fun posting.

Guest Blogpost - Dead Good Poets:
The poetry of war & these times.

Three Reviews of FULL BLOOD
The Times Higher Educational
DAWN - Books & Authors Magazine from Pakistan
Writing Without Paper a wonderful literary blog from USA

An essay about the 'One Hundred' poems which name, with equal weight, British soldiers and Afghan civilians killed in the current conflicts.

The Real Stories Are What Matter

2011-12-01T08:05:00.001Z

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.- Arundhati Roy

I would add though that it is important to do the same even if you are the only one who sees that it is needed. It is hard to not be supported by the world around you, but art, literature, stories, are life itself, as much as raising children and loving other people and eating food. The important thing is to keep on keeping on, because in your heart of hearts it is life we are talking about.

Fragile Stories (A Commission for The Cultural Olympiad London 2012)

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000Z

Images of John Siddique and Dancers by Tim Smith
Fragile Stories was commissioned through Alchemy
as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

Fragile Stories was choreographed by Silja Thomsen and featured dancers from from Northern School of Contemporary Dance - It was Performed at Ilkley Literature Festival 2011

...and if you like dance here is a film, again, choreographed by Silja and this time filmed by Szymon Szulakiewicz and set to the text of my poem Every Atom from the Full Blood collection (please note film begins with silence)

Making Britain - From The Margins To The Mainstream

2011-11-24T06:09:00.001Z

An exhibition celebrating success stories of people with South Asian heritage
who embody transformation from the margins to the mainstream.

National Media Museum, Bradford, 23 November - 4 December.
Photos by Tim Smith
Piece in The Guardian

Occupy Wall Street 'and you may contribute a verse'...

2011-11-24T04:00:00.000Z

As Whitman said.. 'and you may contribute a verse'...

We donated 'Thirst' from Full Blood to the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology just as their library was being destroyed. It seems that the 'powers who like to imagine themselves 'to be' don't want people sharing stories, literature and information. I love that poetry has always been dissident material and found at the root of change.

OWS Library have been creating a weekly poetry anthology from poetry written by Occupiers and those like myself who they represent. Though my take on the whole thing is that we should simply begin learn how to turn our backs on the so called 1% by being bold and creating better ways. We must learn from their failures and try to do better ourselves; not just keep on with the same old thing - we got it wrong, now let us be human, loving, have conflict but no killing and take a step. If we were to stop begging for crumbs at their tables, they would soon come running, and it would be too late for them. Anyway I digress

- All are free to contribute to the anthology, and it is encouraged that you download it and share it around. Please think about sending them some poems, but more importantly keep in your heart how important books and libraries are.

Please also feel free to use Thirst where you will, but please do keep my name attached. I also asked this of OWS, because sometimes it seems that we have little more than our names, our integrity if we choose to live with it, and our words. For me that means my writings. I hope you understand.

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman

Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling Discuss Lolita

2011-11-24T03:00:00.000Z

Imagine such intelligent discussion on television today.

MANIFESTO - A Letter To Myself (from my notebook)

2011-11-23T09:00:00.000Z

I reject living the world of living death brokered upon us by politicians and the middle-classes who buy freedom, liberty and adventure in vacation sized lumps with either inheritance spending or credit card debt.

I reject literatures that only find their way into the world through privilege and connections, which contains the death of the soul in its syllables. Our stories have value too.

I reject the trappings of compromise, closed mindedness and aspirational comfort, acquisition as wealth. Settling for a life of television, shopping, video games, debt, pornography and bad sex; leaving the world and each other unexplored because we cannot look each other in the eye. We must refuse to live up to our stereotypes.

Real literature/art offers an open door to beauty, humanity, joy, difficulty and meaning. I choose the open door, the risk of love, of failure. I’ll take beauty over a credit rating, I’ll take fire, and the possibility of crashing and burning over a slow long life of decay, unlived moments and soul debt.

Everyday the living dead grin into our faces, selling their shit. Everyday we have to clean our minds of these pedlars’ values. The news is not the news, so much of life and reality is unreported, unknown to us, we have to step into life to access possibility. Switch off the newsstream. It is a battle of the soul and we must never forget that.

Art is an act of rebellion.

Do the things which bring you openness and liberty. Take the risk and make love to your partner or yourself, don’t be full of acquired images but know the person you have sex with for who they are. Look into your lovers eyes. Read books of life. Take small daily steps of freedom, learn to make bread or plant a garden, walk a mile, ask for some of what you desire, look into your own shadow and acknowledge both parts of yourself. Listen to the music of rebellion and don’t just have it with ten thousand other tunes on your music player, let it sing into your heart and actions; find others to sing with. Don’t use passive aggression and never trust hippy/fairtrade types. They are assuaging their guilt by spending a few pennies which never get to where they are supposed to go.

It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake as long as it is genuinely made in the pursuit of the real and true. Be considerate of those around you - learn the difference between compassion and pity, freedom doesn’t mean hurting others, it means taking responsibility for your own life.

More about the work.

Dulce et Decorum Est

2011-11-11T16:48:00.001Z

Poetry often needs to be heard aloud as well as being read. Wilfred Owen's classic takes on such life when given voice. I hope you enjoy my recital of it.

John

Yew Moon - 'We Are Russian Dolls To Ourselves'

2011-11-10T09:54:00.002Z

'We Are Russian Dolls To Ourselves'

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Animation by Lawrence McWilliams
Produced by Walter Santucci

Taken from Recital - An Almanac. This is the final full moon film. You can enjoy all 13 films on our channel, or using this webby widgety thing below.. Thank you so much for being a long for an amazing year of full moons. We Did It!

Newsletter for November

2011-11-04T14:46:00.002Z

Hello there,

All snuffly and full of cold here, and we're having ISP troubles so that the monthly newsletter we send out has not been getting through. From now on there will be a link to a web version of it on our main site - you can grab it here if you are interested.

You may also enjoy this piece on Sarah Salway's blog where she starts five lines and yours truly finishes them.

Full Blood now has its own Facebook page - please come on over

Our ISP promise all will be well in time for next month's news update so if you would like to sign up to our news please just send us an email requesting that.

For the rest of the afternoon it's cups of tea, Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book 1, and reading a bit more of Claire Chambers' excellent book 'British Muslim Fictions'

See ya

John

Full Blood - Bestseller

2011-11-03T08:14:00.000Z

I would like to thank readers of Full Blood for helping it to recently spend some time as an Amazon bestseller, reaching the dizzying heights of No.1 modern poetry book. It was released in the kindle format at a very special price, which helped a lot. It has also boosted sales of the paperback. What is most interesting to me is that a book can do so well, not by press coverage but by word of mouth. One reader telling another reader about a book, this is how it should be.

Online you can get it here:
Ordering UK
Ordering USA
Rest of World

Please support your local independent bookstore by ordering from them.

Two wonderful reviews of the book:

One from Bina Shah in The Dawn (A Leading Pakistani Paper). This review compares the spirit of the book to the Hendrix song Bold As Love.

And a very deep review at Writing Without Paper from Maureen Dollas

Maureen has also been moved to pen an essay on two poems from the book about the war in Afghanistan. These poems name with equal weight British soldiers and Afghan civilians killed in the seemingly endless war raging there.

The collection now has its own Facebook Page. Please drop by, 'Like' us & participate in the chat.

Thank you - NUFF SAID

John

Canterbury Poetry City II

2011-11-01T11:57:00.002Z

Some images from my 'poem in light' commission in Canterbury. I asked people to share their secrets and dreams with me and I made poetry from them and projected them 60 feet high.... Imagine seeing your secrets written large and knowing that no one else but you knows it is yours.. The whole poem is 127 lines long. This is some of the linking text.. but it will give you some idea.

Poetry City was devised by the wonderful Workers of Art, and I must say I feel particularly blessed to given such a free reign to create by painting poetry in light over the ancient walls of the city...

(the lovely projections are made by clever projections & butch auntie)

The Culture Diaries - Catherine McNamara

2011-10-24T09:45:00.002+01:00

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney and moved to Paris to study French, and ended up in Ghana running a bar. She is the author of 'The Divorced Lady’s Companion to Living in Italy'(soon to be released by Indigo Dreams Publishing UK) and wrote the children’s book 'Nii Kwei’s Day'. After many years in West Africa she now lives in northern Italy where she complains about the government, translates for a WWI Eco-museum and skis fanatically. She has great collections of African sculpture and Italian heels.

http://thedivorcedladyscompaniontoitaly.blogspot.com

http://peltandotherstories.blogspot.com

www.etherbooks.com

Crew member at www.theviewfromhere.com

Monday 17^th

I do love Mondays. I am not afraid of the pre-dawn alarm.Kids are driven off to the bus stop, the lads depart and the house is mine.

I ignore the kitchen mess and read a Grace Paley story, thenthree more. I think, Golly girl, you haveso much to learn.

All morning I send off book launch enquiries to independentbookshops in London. As I am publishing my debut novel with an indie press Ihave to be my own media machine. Have dress/heels, will sell myself. A bitdifficult doing it from Italy and not being able to suss things out.

I hook up with my publisher and then my editor: we are onour last-last run through the novel text. Little wordy tug-o-wars, gluey bits.

I write a blog entry about women being squashed by artisticmale partners and how some of us squirm away. I refer to Picasso and FrançoiseGilot. Okay, extreme example, but I’ve had my own head done in too. Does thepiece work? I leave it there and rush to the pool. Given all the running talk inevitablyaccompanying a Murakami release I’ll put my 5p in about swimming: it cleanses,stretches, enlivens the cells and circulation. Today I am on my own except for apregnant lady with a ring. I am very glad I am not pregnant.

Novel corrections, followed by piano practice until mydaughter tells me to STOP. So what else to do except start moving my unhappycacti indoors?

A lovely rush to the end of the day: Ether Books like mystories! Grace Paley is here offering her astute and measured congratulations.

Tuesday 18^th

The first ice on the windscreen in the morning and the cactiare looking very snug inside. I can’t find my ice scraper after all that sweatyweather so I use one of my DJ son’s dubstep CDs littering the car. Soon we’llbe heading off to ski on weekend mornings with a scraped five inch square ofdriving vision until the heating kicks in. I love high altitudes but I live onthe Veneto plains.

In the morning I do some blog follow-ups, put my book cover onmy Facebook page, reply to emails, graze about. I read a good article aboutthree types of creative genius with Chopin, who died at 39, being in the firstcategory of those-who-die. Thankfully there is a third group of people who workup to a level of brilliance in their later lives. Shameless, I am hanging ontothis. I am very aware I am not a young emerging writer anymore, just emerging.

I eat chocolate and go downstairs and play Chopin. My pianoteacher, who is a tetchy Argentine conductor, wants me to learn the rest of mypieces by memory. He’s right though, the release in not being tied to the page,it’s like flying.

For lunch there’s just me and my eldest, the one studyingMandarin in Venice. We have a glass of red wine and my tortellini are full ofscrunched-up butter-soaked sage leaves that look like dead flies. Later, it’s timeto bring out serious winter covers and catch an old Law-and-Order episode whilefolding clothes in the attic.

Wednesday 19^th

Muggy, warmish and wet with a sharp cough. The sky is looseand it’s time to bring in the last summer cushions. To think I was in sandalsuntil two weeks ago. The hunters are out under the grapevines but I don’t getshot today either, silly buggers with brainless dogs.

This morning I write up my blurbs for my submission forEther and am thrilled when they say they will publish all eight. I cannot believe!The stories are nearly all set on the cusp between European and African ways ofthinking – ever since I studied Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism at university I’vebeen set on this course.

I feel like celebrating but I am too lazy to drive intotown. I think I’ll order a crisp Friday afternoon thanks, for a few drinking hoursat Sartea - my favourite bar. No luck yet with my book launch enquiries although friendsand fellow writers have been helpful. It is starting to look like an intimatebookshop bash in town here with a follow-up at said bar, utilising theorganisational skills of my DJ mate Grinta.

I cook pumpkin risotto and a rich tarte au citron tocelebrate mildly, before heading off to make out with Scarlatti.

Thursday 20^th

Now it’s official. I’m up as an author on the Ether Bookssite. Of course my picture is pretty dorky and they’ve put McNamara quite closeto Paul McCartney. The thrill of it. I join the Ether writer community and putmy flashy African barbershop photo on sideways. Whatta goose. I was a manicAfrican art collector once. I had a gallery in Africa. Weird, I also didAfrican independence movements at uni and remember the first words of ourdreamy prof, from Isak Dinesen’s autobiography: I had a farm in Africa… I went to Dinesen’s house once in Kenya andmy fascination dissolved. The whole colonial thing was still so tangible.

Thursday is also piano lesson afternoon and I play my firstpiece, a Chopin waltz, better than I expected, from memory. No tension in Carlos’face, I can relax! Molto bene (myheart shivers) he says. You are a personwho must play everything without music, here you are playing from the heart.The Scarlatti too comes off well. Ah, Isee the fingers are working, they are working.

My heart feels warm and light.

Friday 21^st

After yesterday’s headiness I don’t feel like doing a thing.Just coasting. I reread my book chapters, finding little irks, as many as I canbefore lunch with a mate in town. But then Paola has me google-map Sydneyharbour and my place there on my iPad. Astonishing how I can smell the saltfrom a seagull’s eye view and feel the tide. Growing discomfort, is what thewhole exile thing makes me feel with age.

We talk about doing the book launch here in Vicenza, in thatcool bookshop near the piazza. Okay so it’s written in English but the novel isset in Italy, and at least I will raise a crowd. Then some music and red wine.She thinks it’s a good idea. I’d rather spend my funds on printing up mypostcards and posters. Then it’s England, I guess, to offer myself to bookclubs and whoever will have me. And plenty of reviews and interviews online.

Saturday 22^nd

At least the sun and wind have come through. My editor is inmy (virtual) hair and I am happy to get on with it. I continue going backwardsthrough my chapters. Mostly I like what I read, thank goodness, it is smoothand the tone is consistent. There is one nasty glitch which disturbs however soI sit there and work it!

Freaking cold of a sudden, and my eldest makes me ahamburger. I realise it is an age since I have eaten meat. We talk about ourcraving for Lebanese food and our favourite places from the past, especiallythe old Lebanon Club in Accra where he grew up.

That evening we see Melancholia, unfortunately dubbed inItalian, which I loved. The music, the slowness, the rumbling of the collidingplanet. I have had dreams like that. My arty friends try to pooh-pooh it but Ithink it is wonderful and resounding.

I pick up my youngest and meet an interesting Italian/NewYorker mother of a mixed child like me. We stand talking for ages under one ofVicenza’s old arcades. She says all the ‘big people’ were not there at work inthe Twin Towers on that day and mybrain is ticking all the way home.

Sunday 23^rd

Sunny autumn mornings are for reading anddelights! Then a trip to the food market and cooking for adolescent returneeswith homework, and hungry friends who arrive from town. We eat very bitterpomegranates from the tree and collect the walnuts I’ve left on the ground.Then drink ourselves silly on Rosi’s Marzemino wine while MG throws a pizza orfive into the oven.

Ivy Moon

2011-10-12T01:00:00.000+01:00

'Let it be dark, and it was dark'

A bold rewrite of the opening verses of the King James Bible

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Paintings by Dania Strong
Animation Supervision by Walter Santucci

The Culture Diaries - Mike French

2011-10-10T05:00:00.000+01:00

Mike is the owner and senior editor of The View From Here literary magazine, he also enjoys painting, watching Formula 1, eating Ben & Jerry's icecream and listening to Noah and the Whale. His second novel, Blue Friday is now completed and he is starting work on his third novel. For the last ten years Mike has been a “home dad” after giving up his job in optical engineering to look after the kids full time – much of his first novel, The Ascent of Isaac Steward was written during their afternoon naps!
The Ascent of Isaac Steward is available at Amazon
Visit Mike's Blog

Saturday

Had to listen to Madagascar’s version of Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move it, four times on the way to dropping my kid offat gymnastics – and then on the way back ( after my cultural immersion in Tescofor over an hour which is what the whole world will be like in ten years time)listened to Rihanna’s ManDown on my kids favourite radio station Diverse FM. The song which has apolice siren looping in the background had me glancing in my mirror all the wayhome.

After a quick lunch I popped into a workshop run by A Thin Place. Interesting to hear about the impact onsociety of the arts and the benefit of working collectively as artists insteadof just promoting your own work all the time. My favourite bit being a temporarypop up art gallery that they do in people’s houses – makes a difference fromthe massive plasma screen that often assaults you as you walk into people’slounges – my theory being the smaller the lounge the larger the plasma.

All that of course was just a warm up for the high point ofmy cultural day: X Factor and thelast episode of Dr Who. X factoris of course the temporary pop up gallery of the music world and my indulgencein nonsense that annoyingly my brain seems to enjoy, and Doctor Who – well therest of the family loved it, and you know it was okay, but not a patch of theemotional punches that Russell Davies used to deliver. Wife cooked a massivebatch of dropped scones- Yum.

Sunday

Saturday was busy wasn’t it? Sunday less so. Kind of an echo of Saturday but more chilled. As I guess it should be. So a bit more X factor, ITV’s Downton Abbey instead ofDoctor Who. Wife cooked biscuitsand cake –Yum. Zoomed in and outof the world with my daughter on Google Maps.

Monday

A day at The View From Here office with Dog the plant andwatching Wacky Racesafter an impromptu name all the characters in Wacky races competition. I lost after only getting DickDastardly, Muttley, the Anthill Mob and Penelope Pitstop. Edited a review of The GenerationGame by Sophie Duffy that came in from one of our reviewers, before playinghoopla with a roll of sellotape and a plastic cup ( other sticky tapes areavailable ). Carried on with afinal edit of my second novel, Blue Friday looking in Strunk & Whites The Elements of Style to check my use ofcolons. Later kids, tea, a bit ofwriting for Blue Friday adding in a scene then An Idiot Abroad 2 on Skywith Karl Pilkington. Best bit by far was watching Karl get buried alive in a grave by ahealer working with nature. Onceburied and breathing through a tube he complained, ‘This is one of those thingsthey tell you not to try at home, innit … but then why is it alright for me todo it?’

Tuesday

My ipod despite being in shuffle mode refusedto play anything else but New Order on my walk back with the dog from theschool run. At the officeagain with the window open and my shorts on – I mean what the heck is going onwith the weather? Not that I’mcomplaining. As usual I can hearthe sound of police sirens, its lovely here: such a creative atmosphere! Finished final polish of Blue Friday,posted up on The View From Here the review of Sophie Duffy’s book. In theevening I read to my son We’re All Going On A Bear Hunt. Finished off the day watching David Hasselhoff host Never Mind the Buzzocks whichwas like being shouted at in a lift in a mildly annoying way that left youwanting bad things to happen to that man in the lift shouting at you in a mildyannoying way.

Wednesday

Lost the shorts today as the temperature returns to normaland constructed a Dyson bladeless fan out of a polystyrene cupand a roll of sellotape. It didn’t work. In the afternoon I put up details onour site of The Luton Book Festival that we’re running with Luton Library andthen in the evening read a bit of George Orwell’s 1984. Interesting to get intothat book again, bleak but brilliant but damn it why did I buy the completeworks of George Orwell? What a fool! It’s the weight of a brick, almost impossible to read because of thesize of the thing and obviously meant to just sit on your bookshelf.

Thursday

On the shuffle this morning, Lose Control by James, Climbingup the Wall by Radiohead, Only Martha Knows (from the Doctor Who soundtrack –yes, really) and Europe by Train by The Divine Comedy finishing off with The Certaintyof Chance again by The Divine Comedy. Spent the morning at The Hat Factory in Luton talking through ways tohelp the town have more of a cultural identity and cohesion between thedifferent art organisations. In the evening watched QI on the TV – favouritebit was about Albert Gunter who in 1952 made a split decision to jump the gapbetween the rising sections of London Bridge in his double decker bus – Albertreceived £10 for his efforts – his conductor received a broken leg, his twelvepassengers: minor injuries and the bus a broken spring.

Friday

Finished the whole week off with the cultural high of TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which I watched with my mate whilst enjoying afew beers and plenty of crisps. Despite being an avid listener to the radio series, he’d never seen theTV version or film, so introduced him to the marvel of moving pictures. My favourite moment: the conversion, bythe Infinite Improbability Drive, of twothermonuclear missiles attacking The Heart of Gold into a spermwhale. ‘What’s this thing coming to me very fast?Ground. That’s it ground!’ SPLAT.

The Fall of The West?

2011-10-07T00:30:00.000+01:00

Watching capitalism’s crumbing demise from within is very scary, yet as the cracks appearing with greater regularity and depth one can also acknowledge the possibility of light getting in.

I find myself returning to George Orwell’s essays on social responsibility at this time with a feeling of ‘The more things change the more they stay the same.’ Perhaps it is time to simply stop bailing out banks and let it fall.

The only way change can ever occur is by embracing the risk and disorder it brings, and we can never know what lies beyond the next moment, even the expert guessers they bring onto news programmes know nothing about what might come, remember they are people employed to look certain when they have less of a clue than we do. Please ask yourself - besides money, what have these people got? Very little it seems.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T08:02:00.000+01:00

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Eighty Years

2011-10-01T08:31:00.001+01:00

My father Mohammed Siddique is eighty today. It has been twenty years since I last set eyes on him, so that we have no idea if he is alive or dead. How can it be that someone can simply disappear into this world? I choose to believe that he is alive, that he is out there somewhere. I would love to find him and make him some pakoras like he used to make for me, listen to his life; filling in that book of missing pages. I want to sit and look at him, and have him look at me - son & father, father to son. It is all about love and belonging of course, all our lives and stories are. Happy Eightieth Birthday Father, Mohammed Siddique. I Love You.

If you'd like to read about my father's journey you can read a piece from GRANTA about his life and my my search for him. There is also a story about him in the book Four Fathers. I hope one day to compile all the pieces, both poetry & prose, I've written about dad into a book. I'd love to be able to fill in some of the missing years too.. We shall see.

Please do leave a comment on the Granta page if you stop by to read 'Six Snapshots'. It's good to know you've been by.. Thanks

We're cooking up some of dad's favourite foods this weekend: The traditional Punjabi breakfast of parathas and dehi (yoghurt), chicken curry, aloo palak (potato & spinach), and of course his famous pakoras and lots of cups of chai tea.

Some Viewing Material

Migratory Patterns from John Siddique on Vimeo.
This poem is taken from Recital and tells the need for dreams in the life of the young immigrant Mohammed.

Strange how these things happen but just last week someone wrote to me to say that they had really liked a poem of mine from The Prize. It is one of the first things I wrote about my dad, so I thought it would go well on here.

Room For The Invented Father

His walls are plain.

The colour of the room

quilted from book spines.

A sense of ozone.

Comfortable, but not opulent.

His pictures; abstract joy and found things.

A couch of welcome.

A table of manners.

The window reaches over the year,

as it changes, as I observe him,

push against him,

am like him.

The love and pulse of Miles, Coltrane,

Sonny Rollins, Sonny LeRoi,

change from goose honks to the story of ourselves.

And his chair, like a sea captain's or a poet's.

His back mapped into the leather.

His mixture of pipe smoke,

and his autumn in the woodsness.

This room is lived yet immaculate.

Amber nut wood floor

shining from its washings and

our stockinged feet.

John Siddique 2005

From 'The Prize' (Rialto)

Create Yourself!

2011-09-21T07:15:00.003+01:00

Embracing & Encouraging Change

2011-09-13T11:30:00.002+01:00

In order for change to occur in our lives we have to make room for it. We all often talk about how we wish things could be like this or that, but as we look around us at our friends, family, and work colleagues; we see how little change actually occurs. Worse still when we look at ourselves and realise that we've been saying almost the same things since we were seventeen, and we still haven't done much about it.

Change means that things will no longer be the same. perhaps it's that we want surety and security before moving on. We want a new lover in place to move onto, the house deal sealed, the whole book laid out in great detail; all before we will risk a step. But there has to be a gap in order for anything new to come, and it is that gap we are afraid of. Failure may lurk in the gaps: what if no one will love us? What if I end up looking a fool?

To live in the gaps takes a great deal of radical honesty with oneself. It is nobody else's business necessarily, but we must not lie to ourselves about where we are. The only way across the gap is one tiny step followed by another, hopefully with a lot of love, humour and humility in place, and if one has good friends and decent family then so much the better, but it is still us and the gap. Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway how he wrote a novel, he said 'I write one line, then I write the next line, like a bricklayer.' What bravery it takes to embark on making this life a life, what heroism to write a poem and to really write a poem, not just play the same few language tricks because our friends will write nice comments on our blog or facebook. How amazing to say 'I Don't Know' and then to begin right at the beginning, to read books because in order to write them you have to love books and stories.

It is all change here at Siddique Towers. The joiner is in today building shelves into what will become our new office, and I'm practising exercises from "Writing Down The Bones' - going right back to some kind of beginning to find a new way.

We're moving office again after a couple of very happy years in the office by the river. Coming here allowed me to finish Full Blood, which had been my life's ambition as a writer... So now there is change. What does one do when you have actually achieved a major life goal? What does one write next?

This year is my twentieth year as a writer. I have the first poem I ever wrote in front of me. I'll be recording it as part of a special series of poems to go live next month, as I began writing for real in October 1991 and want to celebrate that in poetry. Given the remarkable fact of having written something almost every day for twenty years, we have decided to make some massive changes. Change is life it seems. Trying to hold on to sameness, resisting change, writing the same thing again under the delusion that it will help to keep our readers - all those things taste of death.

This afternoon I am going to give notice on the current office and begin the process of moving a small library and all the business stuff to the new space. New books need new places.. for me they do at least. To write Full Blood I had to travel: Spain, America, India. The writer needs change, must learn not just to accept it but to pursue it in order to find out who we are. It is a daily revolution which no one else will notice. It is such a beautiful world.

Full Blood on Facebook

Vine Moon - Fire

2011-09-12T06:00:00.000+01:00

'To Learn From Each Thing'

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Animation & Concept by Raul Torres & Britt Wallstrom
Music by Katie Chatburn
Direction & Supervision by Walter Santucci

THIRST - A Poem For Who We've Become Since 9/11

2011-09-09T13:27:00.000+01:00

From FULL BLOOD

THIRST

Imagine thirst without knowing water.

And you ask me what freedom means.

Imagine love without love.

Some things are unthinkable,

until one day the unthinkable is here.

Imagine thirst without knowing water.

Some things we assume just are as they are,

no action is taken to make or sustain them.

Imagine love without love.

It is fear that eats the heart: fear and

endless talk, and not risking a step.

Imagine thirst without knowing water.

Fold away your beautiful thoughts.

Talk away curiosity, chatter away truth.

Imagine love without love.

Imagine believing in the whispers,

the screams and the gossip. Dancing to a tune

with no song to sing inside you.

Imagine love without love.

Audio Only Version

Photos (C) John Siddique

Full Blood Recordings - Now Available

2011-08-19T15:58:00.000+01:00

&amp;lt;a href="http://johnsiddique.bandcamp.com/album/full-blood-poems"&amp;gt;Full Blood Poems by John Siddique&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

An Essay on the "One Hundred" Poems

2011-08-16T14:24:00.002+01:00

The two "One Hundred Poems" from Full Blood are the subject of an essay by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper

Please Note - This will not be of interest to Non-Readers, or people who like to shout their unconsidered sentimental opinions on the internet in order to belong to the herd.

Why Full Blood?'Fifteen years ago I jotted a note to myself that I should try to write a book which was utterly uncompromising, beyond fear, and free of the impulse to self censor. I didn't want to be obtuse, or sly, or ironic, or be afraid of making a real statement. A journey through many ideas of acceptability followed, coupled with a deep exploration of modern taboos and notions of sensuality. It almost seems like magic, but I believe Full Blood meets those difficult targets which have become ever more important as time as moved on. An artist has to work everyday to go far beyond their limited selves to create. In many ways is a challenge to contemporary literature, and to ourselves.'

Skyclad - A Brand New Album from Jowonio

2011-08-15T08:24:00.001+01:00

download now & pay what you like... But most of all SHARE & ENJOY

2011-08-14T10:16:00.002+01:00

&amp;lt;a href="http://jowonioproductions.bandcamp.com/album/the-meat-and-bread-variations"&amp;gt;The Meat And Bread Variations by Jowonio Productions&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

Hazel Moon - We Are Made of Everything

2011-08-13T04:00:00.002+01:00

'We Are Made of Everything'

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Animation by Wing Sze Lui
Music by Katie Chatburn
Direction & Supervision by Walter Santucci

The 13 Moons Films from Recital (So Far)

2011-08-02T12:44:00.000+01:00

A New Film will be added at Next Full Moon... 13th August..

Read, Write, Make Love (From My Notebook)

2011-07-31T07:50:00.000+01:00

'Read and write - that is the life. Run and exercise to make your body tired and strong. Talk with the person you love. Make love with the person you love. Keep with their eyes, offer all that you are up to your love, even your darkness.... and then sleep and read...'

An Open Letter to my MP regarding the attacks in Norway and Links in UK

2011-07-25T06:32:00.004+01:00

Dear Craig Whittaker

I hope this note finds you well.

As our MP I would ask you to raise the question of investigating links between the EDL, and other Right Wing groups, and the attacks in Norway when you next meet in the House of Commons. It is clear from the perpetrator’s statements and online activities that such connections exist. As in other matters of national security and threat the UK has been rigorous in perusing connections and groups. It now seems clear that the Right Wing in the UK is an enemy within, working against the interests of the country and its standing in the world, and must be brought into the light.

In our own locality there has been a marked rise in agitation from the ‘Right Wing’.

The head of the Quilliam think-tank recently said: "The horrific events in Norway are a reminder that white far-right extremism is also a major and possibly growing threat."

It’s not hard to see that the fascistic values of the 20th Century are still alive, and in fact tolerated more openly today, of course the focus of that hate has been reoriented, and is often used for political gain and creation of separation in communities. As the upstanding Member of the house you appear to be. I hope you will press for action against this rising problem.

Just as with other threats, Christian and Right Wing Fundamentalism, and Terrorism, need to be dealt with in the same manor; moderate Christians and 'Right leaning' people must speak out against these people, and do more to weed them out within their own communities. The onus is most certainly on those who are complicit by association.

There needs to be dissuasive treatment at airports, police stop and search, a scheme for informants within churches and meetings to be able to notify the authorities and I’m sure there are many other things we don’t know of in place that can be adapted to these necessary ends.

I trust many of these matters are being discussed today, I ask you though for your vigilance in perusing these questions in the light of the large amount of Right Wing activity in West Yorkshire in recent times.

Yours Sincerely

John Siddique

Jill Scott - On Haters

2011-07-25T05:57:00.000+01:00

'...people who are gonna be haters never affected me until I started noticing it, seeing that there were people, family, friends, who were angry to see me revealing my blessings, wishing they were me. I had to let go of some people in my life because of that. It’s been healing for me to say I’m still gonna be me, to say to those people, ‘go right ahead, whatever you say won’t change my destiny.’ - Jill Scott

The Culture Diaries - Valerie O’Riordan

2011-07-18T21:25:00.004+01:00

Valerie O’Riordan is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA in the University of Manchester. Her short fiction has been published widely online and in print, she was the winner of the 2010 Bristol Prize, and she was short-listed for the 2010 Bridport Prize in the flash fiction category. She used to work as a video editor in broadcast television, but these days she’s juggling novel-writing with baby-feeding.

Monday July 11^th

Today - oh, evil Monday - was dominated by writing-related paperwork; a tangentially cultural activity. As well as filing last year’s tax return (a pitiful document), I sent off my funding application to the Irish Arts Council. The biannual deadline for literature bursaries for Irish writers is this Thursday. I’ve been working on my first novel since finishing my Creative Writing MA last autumn, so I’ve asked for a grant to fund me while I work on the final draft this coming winter. It’ll be at least ten weeks before I hear back from them, and in the meantime, the current (second, third? I‘ve lost count) draft is far from healthy, so after the application was sent, I spent a couple of hours hacking and swearing at a malfunctioning chapter. I’ve got a very young baby in the house (three months next week) so there’s no such thing as an extended writing period. I swapped writing for critiquing later in the evening; I’m part of two writers’ groups, one online and one offline, and the offline group meets tomorrow, so I had to finish reading and commenting upon three pieces of work - two novel extracts and a short story. Terminator 2 wrapped up the day - tea and popcorn in front of the telly. Nice.

Tuesday July 12^th

I read all about art exhibitions today. Well, I proofread a section of my partner’s fine art PhD dissertation. He has to evaluate his own work as part of the assessment process for his practice-based PhD programme, so I was reading over the summary of his last four years of exhibitions - like keeping this diary, it made me reflect on how much had happened over that period, and how much I’d forget if it wasn’t documented. And then I watched Gilmore Girls on E4. This is a massively addictive show, and my main lunch-time treat and guilty pleasure. They run the series back-to-back constantly but I’ve still not seen every episode. Now, that’s a goal. At six o’clock, my writing group, Inklings, met in the pub for pints and gossip and a smidgeon of serious discussion, and I apologised for the shoddy handwriting in yesterday’s notes. I think I blamed the baby.

Wednesday July 13^th

Wednesday was subdued. We drove to Bristol to attend the funeral of a good friend’s father. Listened to Modest Mouse CDs in the car on the way down - their first album, This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About, had become our official motorway CD. It’s probably my favourite album of all time, bleak and desperate as the lyrics are - and there’s a song about Dramamine, which makes my motion-sickness feel all special. Patti Smith’s Horses went on repeat for the return journey. Both of those albums I bought when I was on a student working visa to the USA eleven years ago. That makes me feel old. At home, I did a bit of writing/brainstorming; I’ve been asked to contribute to a new flash fiction anthology and I’ve got about three weeks to sort something out. Later I watched Kidulthood, on, I think, BBC3; I like teen dramas and urban settings, but this film was really disappointing - all stereotypes and no fresh thinking.

Thursday July 14^th

I spent the morning reading Alan Hollinghurst’s new book, The Stranger’s Child - I’m reviewing it for Book munch - but as it’s massive and my reading-speed has slowed since the baby arrived, I’m only about a quarter of the way through and I’m not sure what to make of it, yet. Then I listened to an old Guardian books podcast from April, featuring Jennifer Egan, whose A Visit From The Goon Squad won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I’ve got one of her earlier books, The Keep, but I’ve yet to read it. Goon Squad sounds fantastic though, and pretty experimental, which I like, so I think I should shunt Egan closer to the top of the ’read soon’ list. Then I did a very small spot of novel-editing before hooking the computer up to the telly and watching the first episode of The Killing on 4OD before catching the second one on C4+1. I like a good crime thriller, though I rarely read crime fiction. There’s a contradiction there that I should rectify.

Friday July 15^th

This morning I ordered A Visit From The Goon Squad from Waterstone’s after realising that I had five pounds worth of Waterstone’s points on my account. I buy less books than I used to these days because I’ve always got plenty to review and there’s only so much room in my flat, but there’s nothing like a brand-new book - the smell of the paper! - to get me excited. I read a little more of the Hollinghurst, but that was about it; we’re off to Bristol tomorrow for this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize award ceremony, so packing dominated the rest of today. It’s amazing how much baggage a tiny baby necessitates. Nappies, I curse thee.

Saturday July 16^th

After a stop-off in Ikea outside Birmingham, we reached Bristol at lunchtime. I read the first couple of pages of Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture in the hotel room before heading over to the Arnolfini for the literary shenanigans. (I’ll be reviewing Barry’s new book soon, and I’ve had The Secret Scripture sitting unread in my bedroom for two years now, so it’s time I cracked that spine.) Then we headed off to check out the very first ever ShortStoryVille, a day-long festival celebrating the short story, culminating in the prize-giving for the Bristol Prize itself. Joe Melia (aka Mister Bristol Prize) did himself proud sorting this one out - I’m only sorry we didn’t get to every event. We arrived in time to hear Stuart Evers and Helen Oyeyemi read from and talk about their recent books; after that, I had to stand in front of the crowd and introduce the final event, a series of readings from local writers, including Tania Hershman, who’s on the judging panel for the Bristol Prize itself. I won the Prize last year, so that’s why I was subjecting the audience to my ramblings. After the readings, and the Prize ceremony, I bought a copy of the anthology with all the winning stories and got it autographed by this year’s winner, Emily Bullock, before catching up with billions of writing pals in the bar, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a year, others whom I’d never seen in the flesh before. All very tiring. Back at the hotel we went for a late-night swim - is that cultural? It certainly felt fancy.

Sunday July 17^th

Before driving back to Manchester we popped back into the Arnolfini to see their current exhibition - Haugue Yang with a bit of Felix Gonzalez-Torres thrown in - which we’d missed yesterday, and it was excellent. I’d really recommend it, especially his brilliant sculptures made of light bulbs and household blinds. Then on to Birmingham, where I met an old friend to show off the baby and drink an unhealthy amount of coffee. She gave me a CD mix-tape for the baby (Kimya Dawson!) which kept us singing up the M6 and through the Old Testament rain. And at home we collapsed and watched Top Gun. I had another crack at the Hollinghurst but it’s a very heavy book and it’s much easier to flop out and criticise Tom Cruise than it is to balance a hefty hardback above a sleeping child. I hope there’ll be a little more reading and a little less travelling next week. I’m supposed to be on maternity leave, after all.

Holly Moon

2011-07-15T06:00:00.005+01:00

'What Draws Us To The Sea?'

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Paintings by Dania Strong
Animation by Dr. Clarpupia Hernandez
Music by Katie Chatburn
Direction & Supervision by Walter Santucci

We we chatting about this film last night as we were prepping it for you and got into a whole long talk about things that pull people back. With us both, it is sea and hills (or mountains like Mourne in Ireland), and if you put the two together.. that just spells home to us...

What do you find yourself returning to? Pop us a note (or a poem or a bit of prose) and tell us about what compels you to return.

From My Notebook - On Being A Poet Today

2011-07-12T11:05:00.007+01:00

..have more depth than surface. Be an artist rather than appearing to be. So many 'artists' have the right laptop & phone, a shiny website/facebook page etc, they hang with the right people and talk the right kind of talk, but don't work on being rigorous and honest and developing their poetry... and god forbid they should spend years of their lives dedicated to reading poetry for its own sake, searching ideas out which feed the spirit and challenge the inner world. Is a life of surface and fakery going to satisfy you? Your friends will slap you on the back but you'll know the truth. Being the artitst/person you honestly are - moving forward tiny step by tiny step in becoming.. What an adventure there is to be had if we will just put one foot in front of the other.. We're going to shake and wobble and get things wrong, and sometimes we'll get things right, Others will always appear to be doing better than us in moving ahead with the game.. but please ask yourself, is the world of appearances going get you where you live? It is quite a thing to be a poet, an artist.. for real I mean.. and that is good.

Nothing is Original

2011-07-09T14:49:00.004+01:00

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."— Jim Jarmusch

On Nationality

2011-07-06T15:46:00.006+01:00

‘I do not recognise any borders. Nationality is an imposition pushed on us to separate us. The country I grew up and became an adult in, is the world of literature and language, that is the only flag I am prepared to fly.’

John Siddique

Family

2011-07-01T15:30:00.001+01:00

'Family is so much more than blood'

Written & Narrated by John Siddique
Animation & Direction by Walter Santucci
Music by Cecilia Suhr & Walter Santucci

Based on a poem from the children's book
'Don't Wear It On Your Head' (Salt 2010)

Oak Moon

2011-06-15T07:07:00.003+01:00

Possibly my personal favourite of all the 13 Moon Films.. Enjoy and Share.

'Sometimes Our Longing Drives Us Into The Night'

Warning - Contains Artistic Nudity (Not Safe For Viewing at Work)

Written & Spoken by John Siddique
Animation by Daniel Spellman
Music by Katie Chatburn
Produced by Walter Santucci

Please support our work by sharing this film far and wide, and by picking up a copy of Recital, or any of our books through your local bookstore.

See more films from 13 Moons

June Check In

2011-06-02T12:56:00.003+01:00

Hello there
I hope June has started well for you as we head towards Mid-Summer. Here in this part of the world we’ve gone from days so hot the hills have caught fire in April to the most washed out May I can recall, seemingly echoing our rising political instability in a display pathetic fallacy. I wonder why it is we believe these people, is there no curiosity or investigative spark left in us. Certainly the news just seems to be fear mongering and people saying ‘Blah Blah’ with no one checking out the moral or human truth of what is said with any sign of empathy. Perhaps this is why we have always needed, and always will need artists, as it is not possible to get much reality from what passes for reality.

I have been thrilled at your responses to Full Blood… and we have had some great press and features. Radio alone has given us over 10 million listeners in the last few months. Poetry it seems is popular on radio and in newspapers. Bina Shah - Author of Slum Child in her very wonderful review in Dawn: Books & Authors said 'Each word is to be savoured like a sip of forbidden wine.'

The 22nd of June sees our London launch at Poetry Society’s Cafe – we’d love it if you could join us. It will be such a pleasure to meet London friends and read for you. If you can help publicise our event, or get us some press/interview/radio/tv etc please get in touch asap… And THANKS.

The next 13 Moons Film will be Oak Moon - Launching on the 15th June. This perhaps is my favourite piece in the whole series. It comes with a warning that it has some artistic nudity, and at screenings it has made some people cry. We’d like to thank Ledbury Poetry Festival who will be screening some of the pieces at this year’s festival.

Hope to see you in London

My thanks for your support as always

John

What's Your Bedtime Reading?

2011-06-01T10:29:00.000+01:00

Sometimes the only time I get to read in the day is the few minutes before sleep at night. There is always an unhealthy amount of books in the bedside pile, and sometimes if the 4a.m. heart-starts come visiting, this is where sanity can be found again. But more often than not, I read a few pages around 11pm and I fall asleep. At the minute I'm reading David Foster Wallace's essays - Consider The Lobster, far too deep for night reading, but completely addictive. So I was wondering what is in your bedside book pile, what do you read in those few minutes before sleep, or when you can't sleep..? We'd love to know..

Full Blood Reviews & Interviews

2011-05-29T11:23:00.002+01:00

There is an Amazing review by Bina Shah of Full Blood in Pakistan's DAWN: Books & Authors Magazine. The print version also carries pictures and features the poem The Road from the book.

A piece with some interview elements in The Yorkshire Post

A Short interview with Sue Guiney on her blog about how I write and put a book together. There is also a poem from the book which will hopefully speak to the artist and writer in you..

Ramblings with Claire Balding - Radio 4 in Hebden & Heptonstall

2011-05-21T06:00:00.003+01:00

This airs Sat 21st and Thurs 26th. There's lots of chat about Hughes & Plath with a contribution from yours truly. No specific Full Blood content but some expolaration of life as a writer in the landscape I share with Hughes & Plath. On BBC iPlayer.

If you would like to follow this walk yourself, your soul will thank for it, I promise. Begin at the Bowling Club Car Park in Heptonstall, when you come out through the gate there is a wide country lane opposite follow for 5 minutes or so that and it will take to to the top edge of the valley looking way down onto Eaves, and away in the distance you'll just see green and trees. Turn right along the tops and follow this path, cliff top will change to woods after a while, continue through the woods until you come out on the small road that leads down to Lumb Bank. Go down that road a bit then follow the country track that runs up from the right, you will come to a place where five paths meet, follow the public footpath sign up the hill to Popples Common.

Turn Right and come down to the road near the old chapel. there is a footpath sign just along from the houses on the corner of Widdop Road, follow this path down until you are overlooking the valley which is Hardcastle Craggs take the path to the right and follow this along. eventually you will come to a road, cross this and head down to the left a bit through a gap in the wall and to another footpath, simply follow this and you will arrive just above Crown Point where the two benches afford one of the most amazing views anywhere on this island. When you're done, walk down through the village, take a right on Church Lane, past the church and yard and you will come to a high wall with a tall gate, go through this into the new graveyard.. and if you want to find Sylvia Plath's grave it is in here, but we'll leave this last part to you. There is also another very fine but much less well known poet buried in here, Asa Benveniste, whose beautiful writing I would encourage you to read, and perhaps you could give his spirit a moment of your time while you are here.

pics by John Siddique, except 'Group at Plath's Grave which is by Janina Holubecki

Hawthorne Moon

2011-05-17T06:00:00.003+01:00

'Isn't It Time....'

Written, Spoken, Directed by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Produced and Final Edit by Walter Santucci

Part of 13 Moons from RECITAL - An Almanac

Cerys Matthews reads another poem from Full Blood on BBC6 Music

2011-05-15T13:16:00.002+01:00

The Lovely Cerys Matthews read another one of my poems from Full Blood on her BBC6 Music Show today. She read the piece 'One Monday Afternoon in Mytholmroyd.'

It's on BBC iPlayer for a week so you can take a listen and it starts at 1.25.00

Full Blood on Cerys Matthews' Show - BBC6 Music

2011-05-08T19:25:00.004+01:00

Cerys Matthews played 'Thirst' from Full Blood on her radio show on BBC 6 Music today. You can hear it on BBC iPlayer: it starts at 1:19:30 please take a listen. Look out for another piece in coming weeks...

And please do let her know if you enjoy it.. Thank You Cerys from the Bottom of my heart. x

If you would like to hear Thirst without music here is the same vocal recording on its own

Thirst by JohnSiddique

Full Blood is available here

The Book As Teacher

2011-05-03T11:30:00.006+01:00

It is fascinating how each book has to teach the writer how to write it. As I begin what I hope will become my seventh book, I am humbled to find, again, that each new book means that you have to learn to write all over again. Sure some things do carry over: I know for example the stamina it takes to see a project through over several years, that the writing part isn't hard, but the staying creative part is. I also know how difficult it is for family and friends that this project is as important to me as anyone of them. Not an easy thing to admit but it is true, there is a price to all work, and true creative endeavour operates right at the familial level. Fortunately as life goes on and creativity becomes a regular part of it, those who love us learn what is needed, and that we are not going away from them. The artist also learns to not be so much of an arse. In my case having an office completely separate from home means I can enter the bubble of writing, pacing up and down, and talking to myself; without wearing my beloved out with what might appear to be the behaviour of a mad person.

This new book is taking your correspondent on new journeys. I find myself so reluctant to heed the call to adventure, after all there is so much to do in the ordinary world: marketing, public projects, the festival circuit, promoting my new poetry book. Yet the call has been made and though there aren't many words written yet, narratives, maps for the journey are laying themselves out in ink, calling me like a siren to taste what they have to offer.

Today this new book did the strangest thing, it moved from being a bright idea to being part of my body. One tool I use in my work is that I cover the office walls with thick lining paper held up by masking tape. I need to think of many things simultaneously, so I write core ideas and process systems directly onto the walls as they are forming. Visitors to Siddique Towers often comment that it is like a mad professor's laboratory, with my huge leather couch for lying on and gazing at the walls, while I let my eyes sit on the thick black markered writing; little drawings, post-it notes and photocopies bits covering most of the room. I would put a photo of the office up here but all the stuff on the walls is live, so it's not really for anybody else's eyes. Not that any of it would make much sense to you. Fortunately my visitors tend to be people who know not to ask what the scribbles mean.

By absorbing these scribbles into my body the book begins to resonate with the literary music I feel inside myself which will underpin how the book is written. Each book has different music, this is something else that I am learning as I move into my twentieth year of writing. When this core music then meets the story and the inherently wonderful music of the language then the sparks fly and to continue the metaphor, there is melody - or in the writer's case literature.

Pic by Kilian Eng

Patti Smith 'Just Kids' on Bookworm

2011-04-29T10:48:00.002+01:00

Was just chatting about Patti Smith's wonderful biog of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it... and here is an amazing and inspiring inetrview with her about the book on KRCW's Bookworm radio show

Full Blood is Out Now

2011-04-18T17:00:00.001+01:00

Full Blood is out at last, and what a journey it has been. Fifteen years ago I jotted a note to myself that I should try to write a book which was utterly uncompromising, beyond fear, and free of the impulse to self censor. I didn’t want to be obtuse, or sly, or ironic, or be afraid of making a real statement. A journey through many ideas of acceptability followed, coupled with a deep exploration of modern taboos and notions of sensuality. I believe Full Blood meets those difficult targets of all those years ago, an artist has to go far beyond their limited selves to create.... and so now, it is over to you.

I hope you love this book, I think you will find much in it to move you and make you think. In many ways it it a very European/Indian book, and is a challenge to contemporary literature, and to ourselves. Please tell others about it: review it on Amazon, in the press and blogs etc, get you library and bookshop to stock it, read poems to others and pass on this book’s gifts if you enjoy it; and don’t if you don’t.

In these very difficult times for the arts, it is only the act of reciprocity and the passing on and sharing of things we care about which will get us through. The machine ideas of taking the gift of art and keeping it for oneself to only further one’s own sense of limited self is exactly why this mess exists in the first place. So here’s to art leading to art, and human beings creating human things.

Thirst by JohnSiddique

FULL BLOOD is Available Here or Even Here

Full Blood is John Siddique’s fourth full-length collection of poems for adults. Erotic, physical, completely open and fully engaged with the moral urgency of life, Siddique tackles his themes robustly and yet with great sensitivity, constantly defining and reimagining what it is to be a man in today’s world, living full in the moment. Marking a serious development in the writer’s work (as well as the mind of this significant British poet) this is Siddique’s most emotionally charged work to date.

“John Siddique’s new collection takes the reader down the street and round the world. This is a brave and a bold book of linked poems whose subjects range widely from love to hate, from war to peace, from childhood to adulthood, from the real world to the world of myth. Siddique is interested in everything. Tender and open-hearted, these poems are full of wonder at the power of love. Dreamy and yet direct, this is Siddique’s most powerful collection yet.”

– Jackie Kay

“In this beautiful new collection John Siddique seduces the reader with his life-affirming reflections on our mortality and a profoundly moving poetic interplay of tenderness, love and eroticism.”

– Dr. Claire Chambers

Launch details

Date: 5 May 2011
Time: 18h00
Venue: Manchester City Library, Deansgate, Manchester

Date: 22 June 2011
Time: 19h30
Venue: Poetry Café, Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London

Dresscode ‘ A Touch of Red’.

Alder & Willow Moons (A Poetry Film Double Feature)

2011-04-18T04:44:00.001+01:00

This full moon we bring you two very beautiful films from the Thirteen Moons series.

Alder Moon

‘Take a moment to enjoy the pleasure of the Spring’

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique

Music by Katie Chatburn

Animation and Concept by Sarah Ojeda Kimbrough

Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

Willow Moon

‘Explores that moment when you know everything has changed between you and the person you love.’

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique

Music by Katie Chatburn

Animation and Concept by Richard Im

Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

VIEW ALL THE FILMS SO FAR:

Ash Moon Music Played Live by Melati Quartet

2011-04-16T06:59:00.001+01:00

Here is a lovely recording of Katie Chatburn's soundtrack to my film Ash Moon played live by The Melati String Quartet.. Enjoy

.. and while you're having your coffee here is a brilliant insightful review of Recital on the Writing Without Paper blog

How To Live Before You Die - Steve Jobs

2011-04-16T06:44:00.003+01:00

Stay Hungry - Stay Foolish

Excitement grows as Full Blood lands at Salt Offices from Printers

2011-03-29T14:39:00.001+01:00

Man I have butterflies with wings the size of albatrosses at the thought of my new book landing. It will be with me here on thursday and is out officially on Friday...

There's more to life than culture you know - there's dirt

2011-03-28T14:10:00.000+01:00

with thanks to Danuta Kean for pointing this Python sketch out to me.

I am a lover, I deal in love.

2011-03-23T14:30:00.008Z

I am a lover, I deal in love. Sow flowers,

Sow your surroundings to become a garden.

Don't sow thorns; for they will prick your feet.

We are all one body,

Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.

- Rahman Baba

ASH MOON

2011-03-18T08:00:00.002Z

'Sometimes the only way back is through ritual'

Ash Moon is one of a series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital - An Almanac (Salt).

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Animation and Concept by Dr. Clarpupia Hernandez
Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

Doug - Waiting for us to leave

2011-03-12T18:17:00.004Z

March - Checking in....

2011-03-12T10:48:00.001Z

I’d like to ask you a question which will help with my thinking at present; is there a friendship in literature, film or TV which has informed your own take on friendship in a positive way? And can you tell me what it has given to you? Just something I’m ruminating on. I know I can always rely on readers of this blog for stimulating and inspiring responses.

My Poem 'Making It Up' was featured on BBC Radio 4's POETRY PLEASE this week. The theme of the programme was poetry to inspire the Olympics. In the ancient games poetry was very much at the heart of both the Olympic and Delphic Games. The piece was beautifully read at the beginning of the show. I can't think of much which is more satisfying to a writer than to see his work having a life of its own in the world and providing people with inspiration, meaning or story. (The show is being repeated on 12th March at 11.30pm).

The Spring Equinox is almost here, and we seem to be having all the weather at once here in Hebden. I hope this note finds you well and thriving and that the coming Spring holds both promise and actuality for you in these very strange times. Has it always been strange times? Perhaps we’d best not think about that too much. I certainly need to get into the garden and get things prepared for the Spring.

Full Blood is just weeks away. The cover is so wonderful, of course one has so many hopes and dreams wrapped up in a book when it comes out, but it is getting the book a foothold in the real world with readers, which is my goal right now. This book was written without considering the consequences, because it needed to exist. I think there’s going to be some very interesting responses to it indeed. For now I just can’t wait for you to see it. I hope it will find its way to you and become part of your reading life.

I’ve been reading David Foster Wallace’s astonishing book Consider The Lobster, slow going as it is so dense in it’s movement, but so very good.. Highly Recommended.. Also worth a look given our current politics and what is happening in The East is Gene Sharp’s - From Dictatorship to Democracy.

Until next time
Kindest regards

John

Poetry Please

2011-03-06T18:23:00.000Z

My poem Making It Up from Don't Wear It On Your Head opens this week's edition of Poetry Please on Radio 4. I think it is beautifully read. The reader sounds a bit like Derek Jarman.. lovely

You can hear it for the next week on BBC iPlayer if you are in UK

Full Blood - Cover Design

2011-02-23T13:30:00.003Z

Here is the cover for my new book. It will hit the stores in April but I thought I'd let you see as it is a thing of great beauty. I have been so lucky with my covers over my career, this one simply takes my breath away, it so captures what the book is about..

Description from my publisher's website:

Full Blood is John Siddique’s fourth full-length collection of poems for adults. Erotic, physical, completely open and fully engaged with the moral urgency of life, Siddique tackles his themes robustly and yet with great sensitivity, constantly defining and reimagining what it is to be a man in today’s world, living fully in the moment. Marking a serious development in the writer’s work (as well as the mind of this significant British poet) this is Siddique’s most emotionally charged work to date.

What role do writers and artists have in social revolutions?

2011-02-23T09:49:00.003Z

Don't Wear It On Your Head in London Review Bookshop

2011-02-19T17:40:00.005Z

Rowan Moon

2011-02-18T15:40:00.001Z

'What Makes The Day Worth Living?'

Rowan Moon is one of a series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital - An Almanac (Salt).

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Animation and Concept by Travis Sheflin
Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

The poems are based on the Full Moons of the year and the Celtic mythology which names each moon after a letter in the ancient tree alphabet.

The film was created when I was British Council Poet in Residence at California State University in Los Angeles. Made with determination, love, and goodwill. Animation director Walter Santucci, his students, friends and myself set to work before passing the pieces to composer Katie Chatburn. My aim was to gave each artist a free hand in what they came up with in response to the poems, interjecting as lightly as possible.

Another new film will be released at the next full moon.

Please support our work by sharing this film far and wide. You can also support future work such as this by picking up a copy of Recital through your local bookstore, it is important for the future of the arts that we also act in the offline world. If you would like to show this film at a screening, festival or as a TV broadcast - please get in touch as we are keen for the work to be seen.

johnsiddique.co.uk
katiechatburn.com
evilcatland.com

saltpublishing.com

Final Speech from The Great Dictator

2011-02-18T14:47:00.000Z

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have...

2011-02-14T21:21:00.000Z

Dear reader

I keep thinking about the film V for Vendetta at the moment, I can seriously recommend it if you have never seen it. There is a character in the film called Valerie Page who we meet for only a few minutes and.... Well please watch the film and see.. One of the things she says that I cannot get out of my head/heart/guts is ‎'Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.'

It is a very busy time here. I’m sorting the proofs for the new book Full Blood at the minute. I would ask that if you know of any good really literary festivals, or places to read and share work around the world, please tell them about my books and work, and recommend me to them.

A writer is just a scribbler without readers and supporters, and as ever I thank you for your wonderful support. This new book is the most important thing I have done, and once it is out, there feels to be a need to take both it and myself on the road for a good long time.

‘Within that inch we are free’

Kindest wishes

John Siddique

'Every Atom' Inspires Dance & 'Family' Inspires Animated Short

2011-02-10T09:23:00.002Z

Every Atom from Full Blood
is the inspiration behind Debora Johnson's visceral dance piece The Unspoken which features in VERVE 11 at The Riley Theatre, Leeds, 26 & 27 Feb. It also inspired Sacrament of Marriage which was performed at Bradford's Cartwright Hall and was commissioned through Alchemy & iMove.

Family
An animated film by Walter Santucci. based on my poem of the same name from Don't Wear It On Your Head. 11-17 Feb (run may be extended), Art Theatre, Long Beach, CA, USA

Sun Kyung & The Kronk from 'Family' by Walter Santucci

North Korean Guitar Girl

2011-02-09T20:52:00.002Z

February Trees

2011-02-08T19:46:00.003Z

Winter Hellebores

2011-02-08T10:26:00.002Z

The winter hellebores in the window box outside our living room are at their full powers at the minute. We live on a street where the view is someone else's house (many of the houses on the street don't have much love given to them them, so it is not always the most inspiring place). So the container garden we've made, though small, is an essential way for staying alive. The daffodils are beginning to show promise and they should be here fully in just a few weeks, but winter need not be a flowerless time. These hellebores are like white-green tinged bits of heaven when we open the curtains every morning, and as the dining table is by that window they are a breakfast and dinner companion who give so much with their easy beauty.

Granta Interview with Paul Auster

2011-02-08T10:17:00.003Z

GRANTA interview with Paul Auster

A very good interview with Auster, with some interesting thoughts on clarity and the writing life near the end. Also am very jealous of the beautiful room which the interview takes place in..

Does the artist ever feel at home in this world?

2011-02-06T07:50:00.002Z

Blow Wind Blow by Wilmoth Houdini

from amazing comp 'i don't feel at home in this world anymore'

personally speaking - I never have really felt at home, think that is part of being what has made me the writer I am, but also I often wonder what must it be like to feel at home..?

What do you think - is the artist ever at home? Please share your ideas on this with me...

2011-02-05T08:00:00.004Z

Arts by Offenders and Secure Patients

2011-02-05T07:59:00.001Z

Arts by Offenders and Secure Patients:The Co-operative Koestler Exhibition for the North West 2011

4 March - 27 March 2011

The Koestler Trust and The Co-operative are proud to present the first Koestler Exhibition in Liverpool representing North West artists. Arts by Offenders is an exhibition of artwork produced by offenders, patients in secure hospitals, young people in secure children’s homes and by people on probation in the North West of England.

This challenging and thought-provoking collection of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and creative writing, was selected from entries to the 2010 Koestler Awards – a charitable scheme which has been rewarding artistic achievement in the penal and secure sectors for 49 years.

The Koestler Trust has held exhibitions in London since the sixties; this is the second exhibition in the North West that enables entrants from the region to be eligible for additional awards. The opportunity to enter a prestigious awards programme, receive feedback from experts, and be included in a public exhibition is a huge boost to the artists’ self esteem and motivation, as well as improving their connection to home. These factors all help in rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.

New for this year’s North West exhibition is ‘Words of Art’, a creative writing project with HM Young Offender Institution Thorn Cross led by well-known poet and author John Siddique.

The exhibition has been funded by The Co-operative as part of its wide-ranging community activity in the North West of England.

Exhibition opens:
Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 6pm
Sunday 11am to 4pm
Monday - Closed
Free entry

- Event -
Panel Discussion: Arts in Criminal Justice
Wednesday 16 March 2011, 6pm CUC Liverpool
A discussion by experts in criminal justice and the arts chaired by Tim Robertson, Chief Executive of the Koestler Trust
Free (booking recommended)

Recital mentioned in Journal of Commonwealth Literature

2011-02-03T12:39:00.000Z

Mythology and spirituality run through John Siddique's fourth poetry collection, Recital: An Almanac, which revolves around the lunar calendar. The collection contains thirteen poems marking the passing of each month and celebrating nature and the rhythms of life against war and violence. There is a beautifully balanced, tight piece of writing at the heart of the book: the haunting sequence "Inside". Consisting of four poems about London's 7/7 bombings, it describes the almost unreal moments on the bus, before and after the explosions, explores the mind of a suicide bomber, and leads up to the erroneous police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes....

Muneeza Shamsie, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Full Blood - An Advance Call For Your Support

2011-02-01T19:08:00.000Z

‘John Siddique's new collection takes the reader down the street and round the world. This is a brave and a bold book of linked poems whose subjects range widely from love to hate, from war to peace, from childhood to adulthood, from the real world to the world of myth. Siddique is interested in everything. Tender and open-hearted, these poems are full of wonder at the power of love. Dreamy and yet direct, this is Siddique's most powerful collection yet.’ - Jackie Kay

Full Blood Will be published in three months time and I need to ask for your help. I am not the most press and media savvy person on the planet so if you can advise, or if you can help get this book some good press, features, interview slots etc - particularly in the decent newspapers, on arts shows on tv and radio, and of course on good internet sites, I would love your assistance.

This book started life fifteen years ago, but there was no way back then that I had the skills and heart to write it at that time. It feels like each of my books has, in some way, been a preparation for the time when I could finally try with this one… and now it is almost here.

Poetry is the most difficult of worlds and I know that my book faces particular challenges - even my just being called Siddique makes it so that many people won't even get to see the book, I am not the right kind of person for the literary prize circuit... factor in that the book is very sensuous, intelligent and sexy means many potential hurdles for it. Full Blood is a book for real people and again that too can pose problems in certain areas. One of the joys of being a poet is that we can write real and deep and not worry too much because few are looking, but then it is also heart-breaking because when we do write real and deep so few are looking.

Please pop me a line if you can help get help us reviews, interviews, radio or tv spots, readings, festival appearances etc especially if they will pay some money… or if you have magical marketing or fundraising powers and you’d like to throw your weight in with us here for a while, we need your advice and input. We’ll make you a great cup of coffee.. And there’s a lot of laughter in the office.

Birch Moon

2011-01-19T06:16:00.003Z

'Who Are We When We Are So Full Of Questions?'

Birch Moon is Taken from the book Recital - An Almanac

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique
Music by Katie Chatburn
Animation and Concept by Travis Sheflin
Art Direction, Supervision, & Co-production by Walter Santucci

Birch Moon is one of a series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital - An Almanac (Salt). The poems are based on the Full Moons of the year and the Celtic mythology which names each moon after a letter in the ancient tree alphabet. Birch Moon is a Shamanic poem in that it seeks though the meaning of the text and the rhythm of the poetry to create a space in which awareness can evolve and healing can take place.

The film was created when I was British Council Poet in Residence at California State University in Los Angeles. Made with determination, love, and goodwill. Animation director Walter Santucci, his students, friends and myself set to work before passing the pieces to composer Katie Chatburn. My aim was to give each artist a free hand in what they came up with in response to the poems, interjecting as lightly as possible.

Another new film will be released at the next full moon.

Please support our work by sharing this film far and wide. You can also support future work such as this by picking up a copy of Recital through your local bookstore, it is important for the future of the arts that we also act in the offline world. If you would like to show this film at a screening, festival or as a TV broadcast - please get in touch as we are keen for the work to be seen.

johnsiddique.co.uk
katiechatburn.com
evilcatland.com
saltpublishing.com

A few thoughts on Libraries

2011-01-19T05:23:00.001Z

Today the news is all full of threats of cuts to libraries, and as one who would not be here if it were not for his local library (and librarian who would help him choose books every week) when growing up; I can’t help feeling we’re now deliberately making the country as ugly as possible to scare people away.

It is so easy to take priceless things for granted, to think they have no value. We must take the ‘online offline’ with the arts. I know library stocks are not what they used to be; our library got rid of a lot of books to have a computer bank, when the computers could have gone in an annexe and no books be lost. All the same, it’s down to use it or loose it in so much of life now.

So let’s go take some books out. We could even take poetry books out, amongst other things. Facebook & Twitter noise is helpful but we have to act in the real world too.. Perhaps we should really be asking the question why do our councils need chief execs, if we scrap them we could invest in libraries and librarians.. Things and people which actually contribute something.

What a year that was, and what a year this will be

2011-01-06T21:36:00.006Z

Some of the things I got up to over the last 12 months:

A memoir piece for Granta - Six Snapshots of Partition

Thirst a Poetry Film based on a poem from my upcoming collection FULL BLOOD
(we hope to have this film available for you again soon - just a few tweaks happening)

Elder Moon - An Animated Poetry Film from Recital - An Almanac

Images from a commission for a poem in light, for Canterbury Poetry City

Lustre - A Poetry Film commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival and Art Gallery
plus you can download the whole series of commissioned poems here, along with works by Jeanette Winterson and Ding Liying.

Images of a poem for Blackpool enshrined in knitting.

'Every Atom' was commissioned by iMove, Alchemy and London 2012 and choreographed and performed with Northern School of Contemporary Dance in the summer, and published in Poetry Review in the winter.

My Children's Book - Don't wear It On Your Head was published by SALT..

and some columns on the poetic life on The View From Here blog

What a year that was..

............and so this year..

there will be Poetry Anthologised in:
The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry by Indians - Harper Collins
Soul Feathers (poetry for MacMillan Cancer Support) - Indigo Dreams
Out Of Bounds - Ed. Jackie Kay - Bloodaxe

the new collection Full Blood from will be out from Salt. Ten years in the writing, while also writing my other books, and marking my twentieth year as a writer.. so this is a year of celebrating big style.

Lots of live events and readings celebrating Full Blood and a writing life of two decades and counting.

Running a brand new series of poetry writing days in my home town of Hebden Bridge, come and point at the tourists and be poetic at the same time ;-)

...and the continuation of the Moon Poems animated films series.
Check back every Full Moon (next one is 19th Jan) - Birch Moon

thank you for being along for the ride.

with love

John

Six Snapshots of Partition - Granta Magazine

2011-01-05T12:04:00.000Z

‘Six Snapshots of Partition’ is a memoir piece looking at the effect of the Partition of India on my family and in particular my father. Published by Granta as an addition to their magnificent issue on Pakistan. The piece is available to read online here

If you enjoy the piece please let Granta know by leaving a comment on their site..

House Ganesha

2011-01-04T20:32:00.000Z

House Ganesha
Originally uploaded by John Siddique

Elder Moon

2010-12-21T00:25:00.007Z

Taken from the book Recital - An Almanac

Written, Produced & Spoken by John Siddique

Music by Katie Chatburn

Animation and Concept by Daniel Spellman

Art Direction, Supervision & Co-production by Walter Santucci

Elder Moon is one of a series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital -- An Almanac (Salt). The poems are based on the Full Moons of the year and the Celtic mythology which names each moon after a letter in the ancient tree alphabet. Elder Moon is a Shamanic poem in that it seeks though the meaning of the text and the rhythm of the poetry to create a space in which awareness can evolve and healing can take place.

The film was created when I was British Council Poet in Residence at California State University in Los Angeles. Made with determination, love, and a lot of goodwill, - animation director Walter Santucci, his students, friends and myself set to work before passing the pieces to composer Katie Chatburn. I gave each artist a free hand in what they came up with in response to the poems, interjecting as lightly as possible.

A new film will be released each full moon over the coming year.

We'd love it if you'd share this film far and wide. If you would like to use this work for a screening, festival or TV broadcast - please get in touch as we are keen for the work to be seen.

If you would like to support our work by making a donation, you can do so on my website, so that we can make new films in the future.

johnsiddique.co.uk
katiechatburn.com
evilcatland.com
saltpublishing.com

Full Moon dates 2011
	Month	Day	Time	Day of week
	Jan	19	21:21	Fri
	Feb	18	8:36	Fri
	Mar	19	18:10	Sat
	Apr	18	02:44	Mon
	May	17	11:09	Tue
	Jun	15	20:14	Wed
	Jul	15	06:40	Fri
	Aug	13	18:57	Fri
	Sep	12	09:27	Sun
	Oct	12	02:06	Tue
	Nov	10	20:16	Wed
	Dec	10	14:36	Fri

My Poem for the Olympics?

2010-12-20T15:21:00.002Z

'Making It Up' from Don't Wear It On Your Head (Salt)
has been nominated on the Winning Words Poetry for the Olympics website

and you can read and listen to the full poem on the books page here

Please share/like/tweet/retweet/facebook etc..
but more especially read aloud before you go stamping in the snow

all best

John
x

Favourite stuff I've been into this year/but not necessarily from this year.

2010-12-16T15:54:00.003Z

Books of Poetry
Birds, Beast and Flowers - DH Lawrence
Leaves of grass 1855 edition - Walt Whitman
The Scent of Your Shadow - Kristiina Ehin

Films
Let Me In
Enter The Void
The 39 Steps

Albums
Two Suns - Bat For Lashes
After - Ihsahn

Novels
Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys
From Russia With Love - Ian Fleming

Short Stories
Symbols and Signs - Vladimir Nabokov
Figures in The Distance - Jamaica Kincaid
Leila In The Wilderness - Nadeem Aslam

TV
Twilight Zone Season One
Caprica
Dr Who (Matt Smith is the best Doctor since Jon Pertwee)
Dollhouse

Exhibitions
Gauguin at The Tate
Exporting Beauty at Manchester Galleries
Flashier and Trashier at St Pancras Crypt

Hebden Water

2010-12-16T14:39:00.001Z

to live deliberately

2010-11-30T12:42:00.002Z

'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived'.

Henry David Thoreau

'Your task is not to seek for love, but to seek and find

all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it'.

Rumi

'Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation. Be notorious'.

Rumi

This is just a few minutes walk from my office, we are so lucky to live in such a place.. On Days like this.. Days like this..

Oh God I Know This Conversation...

2010-11-30T09:40:00.001Z

Happy Diwali

2010-11-05T16:03:00.001Z

Happy Diwali
Originally uploaded by John Siddique

A fruity lovely Happy Diwali 2010 dear people.. Love & Light & Naughtiness in the right measures....

Lighting up Canterbury with Poetry

2010-11-01T16:42:00.004Z

Recently I was asked to be Canterbury's Poet in the City. My brief was to make the city itself my canvas. Taking them at their word I inscribed the streets with haikus, blank walls and shop windows displayed verse, and trees held ribbons printed with lines of poetry. By day and night I wandered with the crowds gathering and recording ideas from both visitors and the inhabitants of the city a word here, a thought or an impression there, which I wove together into a Poem that is truly of, for and by the citizens of the Canterbury. The poem was then projected onto the walls of the Westgate Towers greeting people with art and literture as they went about their daily lives. .. This was all made possible by the wonderful 'Workers of Art' A massive thank you to them.

THIRST - A Little Peek at Full Blood

2010-11-01T06:28:00.000Z

'Thirst' from Charlotte Taylor on Vimeo.

Thirst is a poem from my forthcoming book Full Blood which will be published by Salt in April 2011. Thirst was originally commissioned by Alchemy to explore the question - 'What is worse than the loss of freedom?'

This beautiful film of the poem was made by Charlotte Taylor and Stephanie Smith and is currently on exhibition in Cartwright Hall in Bradford.

Full Blood is my bravest book so far. I think one has to write in secret, as if no one were ever going to see the work, so that you can explore the ideas you really need to and not get caught in self-censorship. So few people seem to read poetry which actually makes it the most brilliant arena to do this. Though paradoxically, of course, you wish more people read poetry so you can share the soul work you've made your life's work. Still the point is to commit to writing as well as one can, because it does matter, even if no one else believes it. That was my goal at least with this book - after twenty years of working and studying very hard to have some surety and certainty in the way the voice works in the writing, and to then write hard and clear as if no one would ever see the work so I could write what was actually needed from me.. and then to have the guts to put it out there.. Thank God for Salt Publishing is all I can say.

I can't thank Charlotte and Stephanie enough for this lovely film, they have also filmed another piece of mine called Allegories of Power which at this point is an unpublished two-part poem, but you can find the film on vimeo and a few blogs about the place, and it too is exhibited at Cartwright Hall both as a film and as an installed piece.