D4D: Electric Bodies - 'Ways of Understanding' poetry and interview content

D4D (Disability and Community: Dis/engagement, Dis/enfranchisement, Dis/parity and Dissent) was a four year AHRC Connected Communities project investigating issues around disability and community.

Electric Bodies was one of the eight project strands. It explored the relationship between the disabled artist and the disability arts community through a series of extensive life history interviews edited into transcription poetry cycles.

'Ways of Understanding' is a cycle of transcription poems written by Allan Sutherland. They are based on interviews conducted by Sutherland with the artist, poet and journalist Colin Hambrook.

The poems cover Hambrook's childhood, his mother's schizophrenia and eventual sectioning, the damage done to his family by Jehovah's Witnesses, and his own psychosis and depression. Hambrook describes his development of an artistic practice that drew upon his personal experiences of mental health issues, particularly aided by his education as a student at Dartington College. He mentions his involvement with Survivors Poetry and his work on their first anthology 'Under the Asylum Tree'. Hambrook discusses his role as editor of Disability Arts in London magazine and as founding editor of the website Disability Arts Online. He talks about his two self-illustrated books of poetry, '100 Houses' and 'Knitting Time'.

Colin Hambrook was a Community Co-Investigator on the D4D project.

This item contains the following files:

The poems (PDF)

Recording of Allan Sutherland reading the poems (MP3)

Transcript of the interviews (PDF)

Audio of the interviews (5 x MP3)