The Prize [Paperback]

The poems in this collection are refreshingly diverse, taking the reader from LS Lowry's "The Sea" to eating strawberries, from Blackpool's Golden Mile to Jalhandar. John Siddique's writing is challenging in the way it brings together the ordinary and the spiritual, using the spare facts of our existence to open out into wider areas of consciousness and understanding. In "Neckgrip" the details of family photographs found in a box take the reader into another age, and the "poses of affluence" the images convey, mask and then deliver the shock of a hand-to-mouth existence never recorded in this way.

Moving through surface detail to reveal deeper levels of reality is a process which recurs in many of the poems. In "A Midday Angelus" we travel through "low purple alpine flowers" and "grasshoppers mixing up sound" into areas underneath the skin where opposites can be held and known: "while my inside is like/those undersides of leaves. Where there is a back,/there is always a front."

There is a stillness at the heart of many of the poems and part of the process of reading them is to be aware of a paring down, moving towards the still centre. This may be found ultimately outside language as in "Vespers At Sacre Coeur" or through a steady holding of words, plumbing their depths for succour and strength, as in "Manji".

There are many refreshing and original images from "one grey chest hair, like the first fallen leaf/in autumn" (Self-Portrait, June 2004, Jalhandar) to "Kissing crowns,/lost in all but softness"(Ombre). The consistent attention to detail produces authenticity. The rug in "Cheap Moisturiser" is a "green cat-haired rug that's always crooked" and the interior detail in "Denmark Street Furniture" deepens the inner silence which the poem conveys: "The standard lamp, 60W bulb, pools/
a yellow circle, an island at its foot."

Here is a collection of poems that has much to offer in terms of depth, originality and detail. The reader will be richer for meeting the challenge.

Alan Spencer

sometimes i read a poem that really touches me - in john siddique's "The Prize" there are quite a few of those. the first poem of his that i came across was a recording of "Cheap Moisturizer". i have always admired poets who, by using the simplest words, can create new worlds, can convey something that stays with me for days, months, maybe for life.

one of my favourite siddique poems, "Yes", is another perfect example of saying an awful lot within a few lines, without having to throw any fancy words at the reader. i swear i had goosebumps all over when i first heard john siddique read that poem at a lit festival in vienna last year. "Yes", perhaps more than any other of his poems, speaks of a great love of life. or maybe "speak of" does not quite nail it; it shouts out. vibrates with. the image i get when i re-read that poem is that of someone wanting to throw his arms around the world, hugging him- or herself - and with that, not only the "good" things, the things to be proud of, but also all the flaws, the foolishness.

another poem that i keep returning to, is "Variola", a longer poem dealing with a part of family history that happened long before the poet was born. i guess all of us turn to the past for answers at times, and john siddique does so in style.

while "Sucking the Mango" is a fine example of erotic writing (juicy! *s*), "No More" is one of those poems-that-break-your-heart-but-at-the-same-time-begin-to-heal-it with lines like "Even the ducks / in the park are in couples."

john once said he wants to "write about real love" - and he does. not just about romantic love, mind you, but also that complicated love between members of a family, love for friends, a love of life, and this sometimes crazy world - a world that is observed carefully, which shows in siddique's attention to detail, in underlying questions, in moments that might be called "little" if one did not know better.

what siddique certainly does in "The Prize" is opening up to the reader - risky business for the poet. risky business for the human being. but all the more wonderful and rewarding for us.