Full Blood

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.

"Full Blood" is John Siddique's fourth full-length collection of poems for adults. Erotic, physical, completely open and fully engaged with the mortal 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.

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