BITTER BLUE:  TRANQUILLIZERS, CREATIVITY, BREAKDOWN

By JEREMY REED

Published by Peter Owen, London: England

1995 First Edition 

This book is a Blue HARDCOVER in  condition

with 136 pages with photographs of Andre' Breton.

The dust jacket is in fine condition.

An account of the author’s 12-year addiction to tranquillizers valium and other benzodiazepines, a subjective account of the addict’s inner world, at the same time he explores the hallucinated topography which has come to represent his own highly individual poetic territory with a great deal of discussion of famous writer-addicts:  Baudelaire, Cocteau, Michaux, Anna Kavan, and others, as well as pop and rock stars like Elvis Presley, Keith Richards and

David Bowie. 

The book deals predominantly with the creative mind under the influence of drugs.        

MORE ABOUT == Jeremy Reed (born 1951) is a Jersey-born poet, novelist, biographer and literary critic.

Reed has published over 50 works in 25 years. He has written more than two dozen books of poetry, 12 novels, and volumes of literary and music criticism. He has also published translations of Montale, Cocteau, Nasrallah, Adonis, Bogary and Hölderlin.

His own work has been translated abroad in more than a dozen languages. He has received awards from Somerset Maugham, Eric Gregory, Ingram Merrill, Royal Literary Fund and the Arts Council. He has also won the Poetry Society's European Translation Prize. Reed began publishing poems in magazines and small publications in the 1970s.

His influences include Rimbaud, Artaud, Jean Genet, J.G. Ballard, David Bowie and Iain Sinclair. Reed has a long history of publication with both Creation Books, Enitharmon Press, Shearsman Books and Peter Owen, however his Selected Poems is published by Penguin Books. His recent art criticism appears in Cornermag: 'Gareth Lloyd Leaving the 20th Century'. A recent novel was The Grid.

He has collaborated with the musician Itchy Ear.

They perform live under the name The Ginger Light.

The Ginger Light regularly perform at The National Portrait Gallery, London and The Horse Hospital, London.

Their 2012 album, Big City Dilemma, was described as "a trippy comedown machine, taking you by your collar and dragging you along London pavements".

Reed's BA (hons) and PhD. are from the University of Essex and he has occasionally taught at that institution and at the University of London.

 Psychedelia hashish mescaline peyote cannabis marijuana, hallucinogens entheogens,Terence McKenna counter culture Timothy Leary cocaine DMT opium