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Sonnets smile on the Golden Mile for John

22/ 3/2008

ROCHDALE-born poet John Siddique has been commissioned by Blackpool Council to create a poem which will be permanently set into the promenade along the Golden Mile.

The 45-year-old poet, who grew up on Regent Street and attended Bishop Henshaw RC High School, will be running workshops and and working in the Fylde resort’s archives.

He hopes the poem will be in place by October next year.

He told the Observer: "The seaside town of Blackpool is a place of many opposites. I used to get taken there for days out as a child.

"These days it’s better known for the cheap and cheerful drunken day out.

"But as the town is in need of serious regeneration, it’s good to know that art and aspiration can be part of that.

"This is definitely an area of work I’m looking more into.

"Any way poetry can be made more public is a good thing."

One of Mr Siddique’s first poems – he left Rochdale at the age of 22 to pursue a literary career – was his Map of Rochdale which referred to the now demolished Ashfield Valley flats as Smack Head City, Race Riot Street (Drake Street), First Kiss Gardens (Norden) and Possibility Fields (beyond Watergrove reservoir).