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Blue in Green book cover

BLUE IN GREEN

Author: Joe Bidder

Blue in Green is a new poetry collection by Joe Bidder, presenting 43 new and previously published poems.

The collection celebrates the dynamism of the jazz nightclubs Joe frequented throughout his life and reveals honest insights into his experiences as a survivor of the mental health system and disabled person. The poems span across Joe’s vibrant life, written from his earlier career as a young activist and organiser to recently penned work, such as Hackney Downs in 2020, written in retirement.

Black and white and colour photographs of jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald, to name a few, grace the pages —taken in the 1960s by photographer Freddy Warren at London’s world-famous jazz institution, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.

Blue in Green includes an introduction by Colin Hambrook, Founder and Editor of Disability Arts Online, and features original art work by Paulette Ng on the front cover.

ISBN 978-1-8381209-0-0

Book: £17 / Digital: £10

“We feel the intensity of a life on the edge desperate to save itself and to save humanity that we can also associate with all the greats within the jazz milieu that have inspired and created the beat for Joe’s life and poetry. Whether that be the sharp heartfelt melodies of Miles Davis’s trumpet on Kind of Blue or the perfect intonation of Elaine Delmar delineating The Rhythm Of Life, we know that central to the expression within this volume is the music that has inspired a full and beautiful, if disabled, life.”

 

Colin Hambrook, Editor, Disability Arts Online

FEATURED IN THE BOOK

Paulette Ng

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Freddy Warren

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Colin Hambrook
Colin Hambrook is Disability Arts Online’s Founding Editor, working full time from Brighton. Colin set Disability Arts Online up initially as a channel on ArtsOnline in 2002. In 2004, he registered Disability Arts Online as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, setting the journal up as an independent organisation. Since then, he has strived towards his vision for the site as a journal dedicated to work by deaf and disabled artists, which reflects on disability as a social and political construct from a Social Model perspective.
 
Colin has worked in the field of disability arts for 20 years having produced a variety of web and print based publications in that time. He is also a disabled artist in his own right and has two illustrated poetry collections to his name. Knitting Time published by Waterloo Press in 2013 was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award.

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