SO: Collected Poems John Siddique

Selected from over a decade of writing, spiritual teacher John Siddique’s poetry is brought together in this balm of a collection which explores every facet of our humanity with direct insight and love.

The poems in So are very much the track-marks of a spiritual quest, but not a po-faced one. The vulnerability and tenderness of the poem One in the morning is complemented by the stirring imagery of such poems as Rebellion (‘in the aroma of coffee…sits a man whose life has piled stones upon him’); the pathos and drama of A Specific with its ‘slap’, ‘spit’ and ‘can of petrol’; and the uncanny of Bottle Tune (Night) with its ‘spirit-child blowing over / the open mouth of a glass bottle’.

In an age of declarative confidence, this collection, with its Eastern-inflected, soft-falling hesitations and divinations, opens up a world of gentle possibilities, an alternative way of being in the world.