December News

Hello there,
I hope this newsletter finds you well and thriving. It is a lovely day here in the valley, two weeks until Christmas and has the outer idea of Christmas ever felt less so? With the current money grab from shops and media in full effect, I think it’s down to us as individuals to be bold and have the lives we want, especially over the coming weeks. Winter is a generally a more reflective time, my current thinking is very much about how we take our lives back from the sensationalists, politicians and those who believe themselves to be taste makers, and how to have a deepening authentic experience which starts in my own body - which is not about which phone I have, The X Factor final, or what I think of the banking system.

Poetry, Literature and Art are part of the remedy. The Arts remind and inspire us, reflect and help shape us. In tight times the arts are often seen as add-ons to life, when in fact they are our means of expression of it. I hope this season is kind to you and that you have love, light and grounding in your life. Speak to you in the New Year.

Kindest Regards
John

You’ve got to get in to get out

The world will impinge into your need
for silence, into your prayers. In the hardest seconds
of your life, your neighbours will be drunk,
booming hip-hop through thin inconvenient walls.

At the lighting of your candles, in the moment
you need to focus – the apex of your flame,
the voice of the Holy Spirit, someone
will be vacuuming, talking, ringing up change,
a bin wagon bleeping as it reverses, builders
swearing into the distance you put by pulling into
yourself. It sounds like they are calling your name.

© John Siddique 2009
From ‘Recital – An Almanac’ (SALT)

Publication News

Recital
If you are thinking about a book for yourself or as a present this Yuletime – Please consider RECITAL or one of my other books as a gift. Order through any good bookshop, from SALT or from Amazon.

Also it has just been released as a downloadable audiobook by the ever-creative people at SALT. You can buy individual poems or the whole book. http://tinyurl.com/recitalaudio. As a little treat I’ve put three of the poems on the Recital page on my own website so you can take a listen, I have also put one of the pieces on YouTube so please stop by and take a look, feel free to embed it on your blog or webpage. http://tinyurl.com/yzdggu4

A number of people have written to me requesting signed copies of the book recently, I’m always more than happy to do this. If you are thinking of a copy in time for Christmas – don’t delay getting in touch.

 

Some Writings and Interviews.

RED
Two poems appear in the new Anthology ‘RED’ from Peepal Tree - the book will launch 14th Feb 2010. http://tinyurl.com/PeepalRED

'Recital' - A Major Review
Dr Claire Chambers of Leeds Met has given 'Recital' a wonderful review. She will be writing about the book and my work further in her upcoming book. She discusses 'Recital' as a national text. You can read the review online at http://tinyurl.com/recitalchambers
I hope you enjoy it, and if you think it would be of interest to anyone you know please feel free to pass it on. I depend on readers to spread the word.

Classic FM
I was interviewed on Classic FM recently about Poetry, Creativity and Young People - http://tinyurl.com/yk5kks6

Argotist
There is an new in depth interview in The Argotist about 'Recital' and my writing and artistic life. http://tinyurl.com/y9t5ckm

Ulysses
My piece on Joyce's ‘Ulysses’ and its place in my life and why you should read it; is now online at the mighty NormBlog. http://bit.ly/177YUP

'Recital' Feature
My latest book is discussed over at the SALTblog. http://tinyurl.com/ye59v9t

Readings & Appearances

27 Jan, MyVoice at Blackburn Library,
with Daljit Nagra, Blackburn. 1pm

17 Feb, Northwich Library,
Witton Street, Northwich, Cheshire. 7.30 pm

20 Mar, Northamptonshire Readers Day

Office
I have found a new office and am writing to you from it today, I’m right in the centre of Hebden Bridge and I have to say how lovely it is to walk to work every morning. Moving has had the effect I wanted, home feels more like home, and I’m cracking on with lots of writing and marketing when I’m at work. As I look from my window it’s a lovely early winter day and the river is just a few yards away.. wonderful. Thank you to everyone who offered advice and help during my search.

Schools
Connecting Classrooms is a project I’m running in Blackburn with a number of Gifted and Talented Children which links with schools in Bangladesh and Pakistan with the aim of exploring what creativity really is, and using it to aid the young people have a sense of belonging in their hometowns whilst sharing & collaborating with schools abroad on materials. The project is run by SEMA and funded by The British Council phase one took place in October and phase two will run through January.

I am also still very keen to run poetry and creative days schools and as ever am glad to her from schools who would like for their young people to get more out of creative reading, writing and language. I’m now happy to take bookings for January onwards.

Have a good day
John

 

Books by John Siddique
Recital – An Almanac (Salt)
Poems from a Northern Soul (Crocus)
Don’t wear it on your head, don’t stick it down your pants (Peepal Tree)
Four Fathers (ROUTE)
The Prize (Rialto)

www.johnsiddique.co.uk
Children’s website at www.johnsiddique.co.uk/kids
Follow me at http://twitter.com/johnsiddique

‘The hardest thing in this world is to live in it, be brave, live.’
Joss Whedon - Buffy The Vampire Slayer ‘The Gift’

You’ve Got To Get In To Get Out

Mummenschanz

I remember seeing Mummenschanz on Northern Exposure way back and simply gasping in delight - they're still going, I would love to see their live show - but have never known then come to UK

Recital – A National Narrative

Which parts of ourselves?

I’m clearing out the office to move into a real office. It will be the first time in ten years that we’ve had the bedroom just as a bedroom and not some strange combination of work and home-life. The movers come at 8.30 in the morning, the desk has to be lowered out of the window as it won’t go down the stairs. This move feels so right – I’ll be walking to work each morning and when I come home, I’ll be coming home. I can’t recall the last time I went ‘out’ to work - 1998 something like that, when I used to work a day job as well as writing.

Going through a pile of papers I find my twenty-two year old self in black & white looking back at the forty-five year old. I wonder if he is happy with me? Have I lived up to his ideas and ideals of what his life should be. Those were darker days in many ways - I’d taken radical steps to overcome my past, and while the days I was living in then, and the people around me seemed bright at the time, the coming years would reveal so much untruth around my poor young head.

We don’t look too different – I wish I had my younger self’s hair, but I hadn’t started writing then, I didn’t understand the robustness or the fragility of love. The current John has got the better deal I think.  We disagree on much about how the world could be run, about sexuality and sensuality, about taking risks and living up to the consequences. It doesn’t seem like yesterday, it seems like someone else’s life altogether. There is a younger self still who I don’t have a photo of – perhaps I have more in common with him. twenty-two year old John did what he had to do to step away from the past, but those years took him far from some of the things he would have liked in his life.

‘Younger John Still’ remembers making a list one night when he was living in Ireland, and this current John has worked had and long to return to the truths he wrote that night on Obins Street. I celebrate the twenty-two year old, he made it through, but even though I lived it – I don’t know how he did it, or how I would do it if I had to now. I realize I’m not telling you the stories of that timeline. This is no place for that. Perhaps a book one day, probably not. More likely they are done with and here we are, all our lives leading to this minute – putting things in boxes, ready for a move – not knowing what comes from a choice, a risk, but knowing that we will deal with the stuff that comes. I am happy that I am him and not him. I pack up the archive boxes – manuscripts for every finished and published project, a couple of unpublished books, which I rightly never published. Another box with first editions in of all my books. I’m going to put the coffee on, and the sun is doing a wintery display. It is early so I’m listening to Pablo Casals play Bach’s Cello Pieces, later on I’ll play ‘Them Crooked Vultures’, or some Japanese rock from Boris, though I’m crazy in love with a John Frusciante album called ‘Curtains’. It’s funny how when you’re moving you find parts of yourself tucked into old files and boxes – We have to decide which parts of ourselves move with us into the new situation.

Pennine Rainbow

Coffee, Bacon & Beans, Insomnia, thanks & marketing

 
Photo © Kate Mitchell-Gears 

Coffee, bacon, beans & toast – it is raining in Hebden, perhaps it’s raining the world over judging from the skies. On the radio they’re talking about Belle de Jour revealing her identity. The town is empty of tourists - it must be a Monday. It’s late for breakfast – it’s been a late start everyday for the last few weeks. As winter progresses its grip the days have become a bit shapeless, like a skinny man in a baggy suit. One cup of coffee leads to another. Questioning my journal – ‘How will the coming months shape up?’

The lunchtime crowd begin to arrive, a couple of ladies in hats from another time, a scarecrow-like man orders chicken pie and chips and gravy. Being creative today involves one foot in front of the other –perhaps not talking too much, just let things be, so that evolution can lift its head like the promise of sun behind these clouds. And if the clouds don’t break I can just enjoy the rain.

~

There is a feature on my book RECITAL over at the SALT BLOG  - please take the time to have a look, and leave a comment on their blog  - let SALT know yr thoughts on the book.

~

Thank you those who have sent such lovely messages since I posted Claire Chambers review of RECITAL – it is so good when one’s work is acknowledged – I have to admit I despair sometimes how in the UK we don’t get behind books and art unless it has a celebrity aspect or is related to controversy in some way – at least that’s how the papers and media seem to deal with ‘culture’ as if it was separate from life rather than the expression of it. So I am chuffed that Claire has taken the time to share her thoughts on my book. And I’m so pleased that many of you have responded positively in the wake of her review. Don’t think we’ll get the media to change now and become supportive of the arts again. But in a way it is interesting when branches of life are ignored as there is so much great stuff going on in plain sight, but hidden, as the big presses and papers etc.. can’t see what is right in front of them and that is exciting and leaves lots of room for great work to be done.

~

Not been sleeping much at Siddique towers – lots of life to be involved with – so find myself often listening to Miles Davis’ ‘Round About Midnight at present in the wee small hours. I was given a copy of the mono edition recently and listening to it makes me want to say words like Yeah, and Man and Dig.. yes it is that groovy….

~

Have moved a lot of my facebook activity to my group page - i only really use FB for work stuff, and for staying in contact with close friends when i’m travelling – it can be easier than email in that instance…

Dr Claire Chambers on ‘RECITAL’ and the works of Siddique

In recent years, much has been written about terrorism and fiction, both by novelists (Amis, Updike, McEwan, Faulks, et al) and literary critics such as Margaret Scanlan, and Stephen Morton and Elleke Boehmer. However, to my knowledge, little has been said about terror and poetry. This is surprising, given the role of public poetry in delivering swift interventions after cataclysmic events. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on London, poetry proved an importance forum for articulating outrage and trauma at the events, as is evidenced in the internet poetry competition set up by All Poetry immediately after the attacks, and Tony Harrison’s ‘Shrapnel’, which was published in The Independent a few weeks later.

In my view, however, the most important and sensitive poetic response to the 2005 London bombings to have been produced so far is the sequence ‘Inside’, in John Siddique’s volume Recital. These poems constitute an urban series at the centre of a largely rural collection, and offer a nuanced, even-handed response to 7/7. In the first poem in the quartet, the narrator expresses anxieties about his right to represent such trauma in poetry:

There are poems to write which I am told should
Not be written, almost as if to think
about a thing condones it (Siddique, 2009, p. 28).

However, ‘an answer’ of a sort is found in the bead of sweat on the face of a loved one, and in the three subsequent poems, Siddique takes a brave and balanced look at the terrible events of 7 July 2005. ‘There is No More Time’ describes the ordinary commuters ‘looking forward /to a cup of tea, or just getting there’, who are decimated in the bomb that explodes at 9.47 am on the Tavistock Square bus, after which ‘time ceases to exist’ (p. 29). In ‘This Is What You Were Born For’, Siddique enters the mind of the teenaged bus bomber, Hasib Mir Hussain, who, like the poet, lived in West Yorkshire. Siddique speculates on the techniques Hussain used to ‘pull[…] inside’ (p. 30), disconnecting from the other passengers in order to create the necessary devastation. Finally, and most movingly, ‘Nobody Knows Why’ is a lyrical meditation on the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead at Stockwell Tube Station the day after the failed bombings of 21 July 2005. At other points in the collection, the theme of incendiary violence resurfaces in the image of ‘the terrorist in my dreams’ (p. 9) in the poem ‘The Other’, which deals with masculine enmity, lost love, and raw anger. In ‘David’, the poet discusses a friend, with whom he ‘agreed for a decade, then one day we didn’t’ (p. 17), the dissolution of the friendship being played out against the city skyline of pre-9/11 New York.

Elsewhere in Recital’s poetic representations, there are evocative images of the Calderdale countryside from the writer who gave us Poems from a Northern Soul. This new collection is based around the lunar cycle, with thirteen poems, including ‘Birch Moon’ and ‘Ivy Moon’, richly studding the volume. In earlier writing, John Siddique speaks eloquently about his mixture of Anglo-Irish and Indian roots (‘Variola’, from his first collection Prize, centres on his father’s traumatic journey to Pakistan during India’s Partition). Recital is the most astonishing and mature work of his career to date, in which he continues discussion of his parents’ different legacies in poems such as ‘Unintended Loyalty’, ‘Red Line (He Loves Me)’, ‘My Father’ and ‘Annunciation of the Virgin’. These are also hinted at in the poems’ complex references which remake both European and Eastern literary traditions. Examples include the allusion to Eliot’s The Waste Land found in the final line of Hazel Moon, ‘distant thunder’ (p. 40); tropes deriving from Japanese and Chinese myth (‘Promises’), traces of Joyce’s Ulysses and Urdu ghazals. Unerringly humane and unexpectedly tender, John Siddique’s Recital is already benefiting from wide word-of-mouth recommendation, and deserves to become a key text on poetry syllabi for this nascent millennium.

Dr Claire Chambers - BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature and Course Leader, MA Contemporary Literatures

Siddique on Joyce's Ulysses

My piece on Joyce's Ulysses and its place in my life is now online at the mighty NormBlog please take a look when you fancy having a cup of tea and a read....

Derbyshire Libraries Poem Of The Month

Derbyshire County Council run a poem of the month scheme for staff w/ almost 200 subscribers & next months poem is ....

Blackpool Gazette Piece

There was a lovely piece in the Blackpool Gazette for National Poetry Day regarding my Residency as the town's poet. The article looks at the effect the work has had on the on the town, and discusses the book and poems that have sprung from it.

Kitying

Kitying
Originally uploaded by John Siddique

Kitying

Becomes Crystal
– changing state at the age of twelve.

Makes a new name with her left hand,
cutting the facets of each letter with intention.

Polishing smooth each cut to gleam in the light.
Puts her foot forward
– changing state, when standing still.

She has made herself, made herself, made herself
become Crystal
- Kitying from Hong Kong.

Helps her mother with the left hand of duty and love.
Gets lost watching Eastenders, letting go of all the making.

Stands in two worlds with two names.
Pausing for breath when the money runs out.

Changing state:
Looking at the sky as the starlings flock and swoop.
To be only flight, the transparency of movement.

Changing state:
Compressing feathers to carbon, carbon to Crystal.

Clear as the light first thing in the morning.
Still and always in flight, she is making herself.

© John Siddique 2009
Part of Lancaster University’s ‘Moving Manchester’ Commission
See www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/writersgallery/commission.html

Jali

Jali
Originally uploaded by John Siddique

Jali

Returning from the sun to return to his son.
Bouncing harp notes from the plate glass
of Superdrug.

Cutting the air with proud chin,
with cigarette smoke, with music passed
from his father’s hands into his fingers.
Returning from Gambia to return to his son.

The kora is life. Life in Piccadilly Gardens
made clean and crystal, lifted spirit,
as we approach and leave.
Intersections of buses and trams;
Altrincham one way, Bury the other.
Cross-cutting the notes of time and pitch
to hold his life together.

Humanity is different here, he says.
People don’t know about each other.
Music penetrates us with imported humanity.
I don’t play for money, I play for our souls.

There are bargains to be had in Superdrug,
two deodorants for the price of one.
Away down Market Street there are other musics,
the loop of a Romanian waltz played on accordion,
a French tango by the escalators near the shoe shops.

If you come here before the music starts,
you have to imagine the life of the city.
Jali with his kora, his amp and car battery
for power, riding in on the silver tram
as the shoppers gather. Chiming in the cold sun,
in the landscaped square where we pass by,
leaving our trails as music on the air.

© John Siddique 2009
Part of Lancaster University’s ‘Moving Manchester’ Commission
See www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/writersgallery/commission.html

Read A Poem And Pass It On

Everything’s picking up speed again after the summer break here in UK, and I need to ask for your help to hit the ground running. A set of poems were commissioned from me by Lancaster University looking at the lives of immigrants in Manchester. These pieces are now online, and on 12th Sept at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester – I will be giving the pieces their live premiere; I will be reading along with the lovely Jackie Kay. I do hope you can make it along. Where I need your help is that over the next week I want as many people as possible to see the poems, as the press takes little notice of much literary work it’s down to us to help ourselves. All I’d like you to do is to take a look at the pieces (the link is below) and then to show them to someone else – Read A Poem and Pass it on. This could be done by email, by letter, by printing your favourite one out and putting on a notice board, reading it aloud to your kids, reading to your partner in bed, or a friend down the phone; be inventive! – but please share these poems – that’s what they are for. If you use twitter or facebook then use those mediums to bring some notice to the poems. Thank you in advance for doing this.


All the best
John



Kitying

Becomes Crystal
– changing state at the age of twelve.

Makes a new name with her left hand,
cutting the facets of each letter with intention.

Polishing smooth each cut to gleam in the light.
Puts her foot forward
– changing state, when standing still.

She has made herself, made herself, made herself
become Crystal
- Kitying from Hong Kong.

Helps her mother with the left hand of duty and love.
Gets lost watching Eastenders, letting go of all the making.

Stands in two worlds with two names.
Pausing for breath when the money runs out.

Changing state:
Looking at the sky as the starlings flock and swoop.
To be only flight, the transparency of movement.

Changing state:
Compressing feathers to carbon, carbon to Crystal.

Clear as the light first thing in the morning.
Still and always in flight, she is making herself.

© John Siddique 2009

Click Here to go to the full set of poems and photographic portraits, which accompany them.