John Siddique: Full Blood

It is my pleasure to welcome poet, John Siddique, to my blog today.  He is a poet whose work I have followed and enjoyed for several years now. But he is also one of those writers whose career I have observed from a far with admiration and some wonder. For those of you new to his work, Full Blood is his fourth full-length collection and his third with Salt Publishing. His poems, stories, essays and articles have been published widely in such publications as Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review and The Rialto. In 2005, his collection The Prize was nominated for the Forward Prize. I was lucky enough to get an early glimpse at the new collection, and before I offer up a sample for you, I want to ask him a few questions:
Sue: Full Blood is your fourth collection. Readers often ask me how a collection begins. Do you start with a concept and then write poems to fit, or do you collect your most recent poems and then organize the book according to common themes which have just happened to arise?

John: My first book, The Prize, was simply the best material I had at the time which I pulled together when Rialto asked me if I’d like to publish with them. Since then, however, every book has begun with a concept, and it’s not always that one writes the poems to fit but that because of the area of interest you mark out for yourself one’s writing tends to gravitate to centre around those themes. Saying that, both Recital and Full Blood were actually written as books sticking closely to my initial ideas of what they should be and what I wanted to explore. Full Blood looks at the beauty of mortality and how we live through sensuality. I had noted how much self censoring seems to go on with writers and with myself, so I determined to be curious and explore those limitations. I endeavoured to find a way to go beyond the limited self and to write cleanly about the subjects I wished to explore without getting in my own way.

Sue: Your publisher’s information sheet makes sure that the reader understands that adult themes and sexual content are present within the book. Why do you/they feel this was necessary to state up front? Is it because you have written for children before? Or is it, honestly, a way to entice new readers?

John: I think because Full Blood is such a marked development in my career, we felt we needed to be very clear about the content. It is a very human book, yet the thing we are told we should fear the most are our sensuality and intelligence and masculine and feminine strength. We have been told this by religions and media so often, we now have to have certificates to prove we’re not monsters in order to talk to children. It is assumed that the worst is where we begin, and that adults’ lives are basically unimportant. So my publisher and I wanted to be clear that this is not a book for children, nor perhaps for some of my younger readers in their teens and so on, as I have a great number of people in this age range who access my work... And yes of course owning up that we hope that this bolder take on literature opens up a new audience for the work, and also surprises and delights the readers who are already on-board for what I serve up and gift through writing.

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Thanks to John for his thoughtful responses.  Here is a sample of the poetry to be found in the new collection to further entice you.

On becoming a writer

Learn to sit and be invisible,
surround yourself with ordinary
things. Take no notes in public.

A glass of water with your coffee
will let you sit for longer.
Never appear interested in the talk.

Be plain on the outside. Inside
your mouth is a diamond; never
speak of it before you set its ways in ink.

© John Siddique 2011
Taken from Full Blood (Salt Publishing)
ISBN 9781844718245
Available at your Bookshop, Library & Online Store

Easter and Passover

Like all Brits, I'm enjoying the summery first of our two back-to-back four-day weekends. But I thought I'd drop by just to say Happy Easter to all my Easter-observing friends, and Happy Passover to all my Passover-observing friends. I'm sort of a one woman conference of Christians and Jews over here, but hey-- not a bad thing to be.

Singers Hill Synagogue, Birmingham

St. Pauls

And to the rest of you who follow neither of the above holidays, happy Sunday.

Novel Writing Tips

Once I returned home from SE Asia, I fell into a whirlwind (or was it a whirlpool) of writing. Novel 3 was in my head, in my dreams, and I awoke each morning and wrote for two hours, even before grabbing a cup of coffee. Things have calmed down a bit, although I am still making progress nearly every day. This book is definitely happening faster than the other ones did -- at least in the first draft stage. But I just finished two  hours of writing about Deborah, Srey and a host of new characters who are finding themselves in the beginning of their Siem Reap adventure, and I thought I'd take a moment to start compiling a list of how-to's. I'm noticing that there are certain issues that I am aware of now, even in this early stage, that I wasn't really thinking about until later drafts of novels 1 and 2 --  of course otherwise known as Tangled Roots and A Clash of Innocents. I know getting them down in black-and-white will be helpful to me. Maybe it will be to you, too. So, in no particular order:

1. When writing in 3rd person, I am always stopping myself in a very self-conscious way to ask "who's point of view is this?" Am I jumping too quickly between different viewpoints, ie am I making my reader dizzy?

2. After direct dialogue, am I falling into the "adverb trap", ie  "he laughed loudly" "she asked timidly" Kill those adverbs! Kill them, I say! If he's so loud, let him show us how and why. If she's so timid, let the speech express it for itself.

3. When writing in 1st person, am I letting my character explain away too much? You don't want to hear her psychoanalyze herself. Where's the fun in that? Let the readers play shrink.

4. This one might just be about me but -- am I rushing? Am I in such a hurry to write the big scene or write the big confrontation that I'm not preparing the reader enough for what is to come?  Granted, this is the sort of thing I often flesh out in subsequent drafts, but wouldn't it be better to slow down a bit right off the bat?

5. Each character, I find, has a main trait which is the key to their journey. But no one is monochromatic. Am I allowing all their different sides to come through, no matter how conflicting they might seem to be?

6. I have a tendency to start every new paragraph with "So..." as if I didn't trust the reader to follow the plot on his/her own. I think I also don't trust myself to make it all clear and compelling. Oh Writer - trust your readers and Writer - trust yourself.

And lastly, for now...

7. Give yourself a break. If it's not working on any given session, step away, go for a walk, try not to have a drink or a fifth cup of coffee, but do something else.  And don't beat yourself up about it. Very often, it's during those breaks of desperation when the great stuff gets created. It's hard enough writing a novel without treating yourself like a naughty schoolkid. Give yourself (ie myself) a break.

I'm sure I'll have loads more of these as I go along and I'll pass them on whenever they mount up. Actually, I'll write myself a note to do it right now -- my grasp of reality is a bit tenuous at the moment :-)

Dance Music

I'm flying back to London today after a quick trip to Boston. The weekend was full of meetings, talking, seeing family, ridiculous weather and...dancing! Number 2 Son's band played at a dinner for UK kids preparing to finish college - a proper black tie "Leavers Dinner". His band plays great old Motown and funk tunes,but a Facebook friend turned me onto this Youtube video that I thought I'd share with you, just to keep the music theme going. It isn't funk. It isn't Motown. But it is a combination of three other favourites...the godlike Carlos Santana, Jose Feliciano, whose fabulous voice hasn't changed in over 30 years and, with Ricky Martin who is a little too beautiful to look at, they are playing their take on "Light My Fire" by The Doors. For those of you who have read my novel Tangled Roots, you'll remember that that piece of music provides a soundtrack to the life of my poor, distracted physics professor, John (oh yes - there is always a plug to be made).
Enjoy!

Light My Fire Goes Latin


(I'm writing this on my IPad which is a bit tricky, so just in case the link doesn't work, here's the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rAdO6hvjkY&sns=em

Poetry Bingo

My very funny, very clever writer friend, J.D. Smith, came up with this game.  In honor (notice the American lack of 'u') of April being American poetry month, a season of many readings and very many open mics, J.D. created this Open Mic Bingo board. J.D. and I share a rather snide and obnoxious sense of humour, but I think this is just hysterical. So for all you poetry readers out there, this one's for you:

And since I stole this from him, I'll take this opportunity to give him a proper plug, especially since his new book of essays has recently been published. Dowsing and Science shows him meandering through the rather wide-ranging and quirky world in his head, while his first poetry collection, Settling for Beauty, is simply that - beautiful. Though, to be honest, my favourite book of all of his is his heartwarming children's tale, The Best Mariachi in the World.

Losing Dostoevsky

When I was at the very impressionable age of sixteen, an English teacher convinced me that The Brothers Karamazov was the best novel ever written. And I, of course, believed him.  He was one of those smarter-than-thou worldly sort of teachers, and I was a wide-eyed, eager suburban girl who had just begun to dream of places outside her cul de sac. The course was called something like "Great Books of World Literature" and you had to be accepted into it. I was thrilled to be there and gobbled up every assignment  -- get the picture? So I read Brothers and was completely blown away by it in a life-changing, oh-my-God-this-is-so-deep kind of way. I then spent the next x-decades telling myself that, indeed, Dostoevsky was the most important writer of all time, and nothing could ever match the portrayals of Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha.

Fast forward to the advent of the ebook and the Christmas purchase of my ipad (my Russian ancestors must be turning in their graves). Ibooks was giving away some classic texts to get you hooked on the ebook experience. I browsed through the possibilities and found The Brothers K. What a perfect chance to reread this seminal novel, I thought, and after all these years. I'm not sure if the translation is any good -- I'm still not sure -- but what the hell. So I downloaded it, and around six weeks later I settled down to read. Two months and thousands of miles later, I am just coming up for breath.

Now, these are controversial times that we live in and, being a rather timid person, I try to shy away from controversial topics on my blog (you'll notice I haven't said anything about the ACE cuts -- yet). But man oh man -- what a slog these thousand pages have been. What a huge disappointment.  Okay, I get it - man makes God in his own image. The devil resides in us all. Love and hate are two sides of the same emotion. Here's what Amazon's blurb says:
     Dostoevsky searhes for the truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time. 

Without mentioning the Amazonian misspelling, I must say I disagree. Yes, this is a  huge achievement which struggles with the ultimate perplexities and fears of human life. Yes, the story of partricide and forbidden love is timeless. But sorry -- for me, it's not enough. This may well be a matter of fashion, of centuries of writing forcing us to expect something else from our novels, something more. And of course, with translation you can never feel sure about the use of language. But a novel is not a diatribe. It is not merely a psychological case study. It is a creation of a world which someone hundreds of years and miles away can enter into with ease and excitement. It is the use of language to reveal the gradual unveiling over time of characters, their dreams and realities. It must ultimately be a conversation between writer and reader, a give-and-take of heart as well as brain. Maybe my adolescent memories were still too strong, my expectations too high. But I was hugely disappointed and if I wasn't the crazily loyal sort of reader that I am, I would have switched off the button on this one after page 300.  Maybe Crime and Punishment has withstood the test of time better. I know two years ago I reread War and Peace and was more amazed than ever. But I'm sorry Fyodor, not to mention Mr. Cates. I'm glad my rereading of The Brothers Karamazov is now finally over and I can get on with my life.

1st Person, 3rd Person: Who's Talking Here?

I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I've been on a roll ever since I got home. I've gotten into this pattern where I wake up, novel 3 is already in my head, and I start writing even before I get out of bed. Two hours or so later, I'm still there, ravenous, but with another 1500 words or so written down. It's just great. And I'm convinced that it works for me because this way I trick myself into writing. I'm not awake enough to start making excuses. It's too early to find emails waiting that must be answered immediately. There are no distractions.  Bliss. Obviously, as recently as two years ago, I never would have been able to consider doing this. But now that 25 years of child rearing is behind me, my time is my own. One good thing about getting older...

But that's not the point. The point is that because I'm half asleep when I get started I'm not driving myself crazy worrying about imagined complexities of style. You see, after all this time and all these words, I had somehow convinced myself that I could only write in 1st person.  Both of my novels are written that way, and I began to believe that I didn't understand how to write in any other way.  Third person was escaping me. Whenever I thought about writing in 3rd person I stopped myself and said, "Wait a minute. Who is this person telling this story? Why should I believe her? Or is it a him? Where does he/she live? What did he/she have for breakfast?"  I am so concerned with creating characters that I couldn't stop myself from feeling that my narrator needed to be a character, too. Now, of course, sometimes he does. But not always and yesterday, without stopping to obsess about it, I just started doing it. I started writing in 3rd person, that person being, I guess, Sue Guiney, and sometimes I would look through the eyes of one character, sometimes another, but I never used anyone else's voice except, well, I guess, my own. And it seems to be working. I feel like a skiier who's finally learned how to make turns. Sometimes I can write one way, sometimes another. It's great, especially because I think novel 3 needs to have alternating voices. Deborah from A Clash of Innocents will sometimes be there giving her commentary. But she won't be there to actually witness the action and so the plot has to be told in some other way -- 3rd person! Oh, the joys of not thinking to much....

Jet Lag and other Flight-Related Pleasures

I'm back in London, and amazingly enough, the sun is shining and it's Mother's Day.  Mr. D is out overseeing little league baseball outside of one of Britain's most notorious prisons -- yes, it's true.  Son #1 is due to arrive over here later to take his old mum out for lunch.  Son #2 is still asleep over in the States but has been reminded that old mum celebrates UK Mothering Sunday and not US Mother's Day, so a phone call is in order.

The house is quiet and I'm taking a moment to reflect on the subsidiary powers of flight.  What am I talking about?  Well, jet lag to start.  I had no idea how bad it might be.  I usually find flying westward not nearly as difficult as flying eastward, but I had been east for a month and SE Asia is a very long way away.  It's been interesting, though.  Yes, on that first day back my face suddenly went numb at about 3 pm and the world went sort of whoozy.  But I tried an unusual remedy....I went for a run at about 4, and although it was probably one of the all time most painful runs ever, it woke me up enough to make it through dinner, and then conked me out enough to sleep through that night.  And after that, I've been fine, more than fine, because although I found myself waking up a couple of hours too early, that semi-concious early morning haziness led to a sort of fictive delerium where characters in my new book started talking in my head, and against all odds, I ended up writing the opening 500 words of novel 3.  That, for me, is euphoria, not only because it means that my trip is firmly planted inside of me and really can be a new source of inspiration, as I had hoped.  But it also means that I am now tumbling into writing mode, which necessitates spending less time promoting, and more time creating. It may seem like a subtle shift to everyone who lives outside my head (in other words, everyone), but to me it changes everything.  More on that later, I think, as I sort out a new schedule for myself, a new set of priorities, and a different sort of balance in my life.

So there's that.  But as I was sitting in the sunshine reading the paper and it's entire series on what it means to be happy -- Britain's latest obsession ("yes, I am happy, goddamn it, now leave me alone" I can hear an entire nation cry), I started to think about what makes us happy and the idea of flight somehow got conflated with that.  This morning I was led to two wonderful videoclips which really made me happy and which remind me of flying, even though neither of them have anything to do with flight. One is about doing bicycle tricks.  The other is about dueling cellos.  See what you think, but each comes with a caveat...for the cello's, ignore the silly fighting bit in the middle and just watch what they do with their bows.  And for the bike -- well, on this Mothering Sunday, I couldn't help but wonder, "where is this guy's mother..." (ps you can skip the advert in the beginning)