Full Blood: (Salt Modern Poets)

Intelligent, sensual, highly erotic, manly and beautifully mortal – Full Blood is the result of a fifteen-year labour of love. This is literature in its most empowered state, and poetry at its most radical, lyrical and affecting. Full Blood invites you in easily, and then turns into one of those books that you can’t put down because it has become your close friend. John Siddique was born in 1964. His discovery of his local library when young began his life-long love affair with what words mean and how they sit together. He is the bestselling author of Recital – An Almanac, Poems From A Northern Soul, The Prize and now Full Blood. He is the co-author of the story/memoir Four Fathers. He has contributed poems, stories, essays and articles to many publications, including Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, and The Rialto. The Prize, published to wide acclaim in 2005, was nominated for the Forward Prize. His children’s book Don’t Wear It On Your Head was shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award in 2007. On publication in 2009, Recital was described as “one of the most important British poetry books of the last twenty years” by Lauri Ramey of CSULA. Jackie Kay describes Siddique’s writing as “A brilliant balancing act.” Siddique is admired for his captivating readings and his infectious love of literature. He teaches poetry and creative writing in the UK and abroad, and has worked with The British Council, The Arvon Foundation, The Poetry School and The Poetry Society. He has a website at www.johnsiddique.co.uk

Table of Contents:
Contents Prologue Every Atom Via Negativa Thirst The Knife Love Poem Memorial Day Mary One Monday Afternoon in Mytholmroyd Rachel Last Springtime Coffee Mornings The Learning Skin The Last Poem Kabul One Hundred One Hundred Afghanistan 1970, Stopped Filey Blue I Think of You Parenthesis Blackbird, Silence Your Shrill Song My Beautiful Fantasist Pig There Were Birds True Roses of England Reclaiming the Body Name Between the Words Adultery Most of the Things That Need to be Seen are Seen with the Eyes Closed Lightly Green Dogs For Our Final Fuck of the Afternoon Sunday Love Poem Via Negativa The Tree of Life Making Detail Unwritten Circumnavigations Trial One – The Root of the Root Circumnavigations Trial Two – Ritual of the Sun Circumnavigations Trial Three – Action Circumnavigations Trial Four – Sin Eating Circumnavigations Trial Five – A Gospel of Silence (Pygmalionism) Circumnavigations Trial Six – Shadows Circumnavigations Trial Seven – Love and the Body Tree of Life Xibulba Lustre Xibulba Why? Full Blood Gauntlets We Will Wake at Dawn Mary Blackpool Rock Rain Song How to Sleep How to Become a Moth On Becoming a Writer Bailero The Road Become Eagle Love Poem Jali Kitying Abha Maria Junmo Flowing Sky Burial A Place of Silence

About the Author :
John Siddique was born in 1964. His discovery of his local library when young began his life-long love affair with what words mean and how they sit together. He is the bestselling author of Recital — An Almanac, Poems From A Northern Soul, The Prize and now Full Blood. He is the co-author of the story/memoir Four Fathers. He has contributed poems, stories, essays and articles to many publications, including Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, and The Rialto.

Review :
Siddique's new poetry collection contains powerful reflections on love, loss, war, peace and alternative modes of living for these days of financial and political turmoil. In one sequence, The Knife, he discusses racism in northern England; in another, Reclaiming the Body, love and sex are described with tender honesty. Technically virtuosic yet direct and sensual, this is a collection I keep returning to.