A new Fibonacci poem inspired by the art of a friend.

Fight by Nikola Stanković I first worked with my friend, the Serbian artist Nikola Stanković, in 2018, when I opened a virtual art gallery, Glinka Gallery, in the virtual world of Second Life: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Seaforth/85/198/29 Nikola Stanković’s outstanding paintings formed our first exhibition there, where I was impressed by the variety of techniques he uses, from…

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An extraordinary novel by a shocking man.

Tony, a French friend, recently sent me an illustrated French novel by a novelist that I was embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894 – 1961). I googled him, as you do, and discovered that he is not only regarded as one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th…

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I have a new photographic portrait

I’m very pleased with this portrait taken just before Christmas by the excellent Brighton photographer David Myers. He had a vision and pursued it with real energy and enthusiasm. So much so that I went from self-conscious man waiting to be shot to the person you see here. David said he wanted to capture a…

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Staying in with my laptop

I bought my first laptop last year as a luxurious add-on to the desktop computer that sits in the office room where I spend most of my writing days here at home in Lewes, UK. I suppose I should confess that I have been envious of all those lucky people that I’ve seen over the…

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My thanks to Acumen for publishing my poem about short-sightedness

I was, as they used to say in Manchester, dead chuffed to have one of my poems published in the latest edition of the distinguished British literary journal, Acumen. The poem was a remembered moment, an epiphany, in fact, when, at the age of around eleven, I had my first pair of glasses to correct…

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100 years in The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece is 100 years old this year and I am preparing to read the complete poem online in the virtual world known as Secondlife to mark the centenary of its publication. Yes, virtual worlds really do support writers and writing, even more importantly, we get an international audience to poetry events there which…

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Ten years on – my life in two photographs

Me in October 2011 (left) and then in October 2021 (right) photographs by David Stacey The first portrait photograph of me was honest, I thought, no frills, just me as I was that day. sitting in front of the Georgian fireplace in my Lewes home. It was as true an image as photography can deliver….

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Have we done enough?

I am thinking about the women and girls of Afghanistan. Was this really the best the world could have done for them? These twenty years of corrupt and ineffectual Afghan governments seemed better than the terrible Taliban regime that proceeded them, and there was some hope that international assistance, not just guns and soldiers, could…

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Coming out of my cage

I have been reluctant to post my blogs over the last few months of lockdown and its aftermath here in Lewes, UK. I didn’t feel I had much to add to the millions of comments about the pandemic over the last eighteen months as I am convinced that no one would be interested in what…

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Titian’s Nudes are the subject of my new Fibonacci poems.

Titian: Perseus and Andromeda (about 1554-6) Perseus and Andromeda Nude in chains on the rocks she’s picture-perfect. Titian’s Andromeda displayed for us mortals, for hungry beasts, and for Perseus who dives seaward dressed-to-kill in pink and gold robes to slaughter the slavering monster. He’s a boy-hero, pointing his scimitar, playing the man-of-action awed by the…

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Artemisia – the art of self-defence

Artemisia Gentileschi at The National Gallery, London. Artemisia: Judith beheading Holofernes (1613-1614) Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Last week I went to the new exhibition at London’s National Gallery. It is the first major exhibition in Britain of the magnificent Baroque paintings by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1654), who, still relatively unknown in this…

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I had a red door and…

When I moved into my house here in Lewes, the door was red. It was OK, but not great – one of those shades of red that wasn’t quite confident enough to be either red or pink. Anyway, it was fine and I would’ve stuck with it if it hadn’t needed a new letterbox and…

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Titian Reunited

LOVE DEATH AND DESIRE Titian’s Six Masterpieces reunited after over 400 years 10 August 2020: I was socially distanced at The National Gallery in London In early March this year, I was looking forward to going to see the National Gallery’s much anticipated Titian exhibition Love Death and Desire. The great Italian Renaissance painter’s six…

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My 25 pushups challenge – every day for 25 days.

In July this year, while the UK was still locked down, I was challenged by a friend on Facebook to do the 25 Day Pushup Challenge and, because I can’t resist challenges, I did it. The idea was to do 25 pushups every day for 25 days, to film the process and to post it…

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In 2020 I went to Pompeii and then to Troy

Troy myth and reality. At the beginning of 2020, I spent a week in Naples and visited the fateful ruins at Pompeii where you have to think about the disaster that befell the folks there in in the year 79 AD when the volcano Vesuvius erupted. Little did I know then that the year 2020…

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Wolfie Caged

How I survived lockdown. I have finally got round to writing a blog now that, wisely or foolishly, the great British lockdown is being eased. Until now, I haven’t quite managed to write about this, the strangest of times. I was last on here in February for the launch of my poetry collection, Remembering Blue,…

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Let’s hear it for our independent book shops and local publications.

My third published book, is a poetry collection, Remembering Blue and, as we enter the new year, I shall be letting you know about scheduled events plants for it, including readings, reviews and various appearances already booked. So keep tuned if you would like to follow me and my little book’s progress. In these troubled…

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MUSEPIE-PRESS MAKE COLIN BELL THEIR FEATURED POET INTERNATIONAL

Home page for Muse-Pie Press I am thrilled to be the new Featured Poet International for American poetry publisher, Muse-Pie Press, producers of the three highly-respected poetry journals: Fibonacci poetry specialist, The Fib Review; short-form poetry publishers, Shot Glass Journal; and the spoken-word magazine, Bent Ear Journal. I have had a few short poems published…

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Claiming my Irish inheritance

My paternal grandmother, my father and myself, aged 10. Most people regard me as a typical Englishman, but, in reality I am, like many people born in the British Isles, a mixture of English, Scottish and Irish. It just happens that I grew up in Sussex in Southern England, with my father, Andy, who was…

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Hitting the ground running

I’ve been trying to get back to full fitness now for twenty months, nearly two years, after a difficult eight or so years of ill-health. A brain haemorrhage in 2008, and a pulmonary embolism a few years later, in 2013/14, left me pretty winded and it’s was often effort enough to walk, let alone run,…

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Eve (and Adam) keep falling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQUZ7d1Rsbo There are two poems about Adam and Eve in my new poetry collection, Remembering Blue, this one, Eve, came together as a little film made in my home town of Lewes, UK. Maybe I’m a bit obsessed by our earliest, or maybe-not ancestors. There was always something that interested me about the fall from…

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Kneeling can give you nightmares – I wrote a poem about it.

I went to one of those boarding schools where pupils were expected to pray every day even when the act of praying was, to me at least, a bit of a mystery. We spend what seemed like hours, (but what was probably only around ten minutes) on our knees in the dormitory every night before…

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Poetry and Dance coming together in my ‘virtual’ world.

Last week, as part of the ‘virtual’ exhibition, Remembering Blue, at my ‘virtual’ gallery, Glinka Gallery, I took part in a wonderful event with the ever-inventive ‘virtual’ dance company, The Sway & Dance Troupe. OK, what’s all this stuff about ‘virtual’? The creativity and originality of virtual worlds are not celebrated enough in the ‘real’…

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Remembering Peter Fonda – the easy rider

I was sad to hear of Peter Fonda’s death, not just because he starred in Easy Rider, one of my favourite films, or just because he was unusual for a Hollywood star (in those days) to take an active role in the counter revolution of the late 1960s, but also because I have personal memories…

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I’m Rediscovering Youtube

My Youtube page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkTPtxAMuo Colin Bell reading Haiku A few years ago I started to record myself reading some of my poems but also poetry by greater people than me. I moved away from this idea when I ran into computer problems and then forgot about these little videos until I revived my account at…

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My new poetry collection, Remembering Blue, begins with a haiku

The first page in my new poetry collection, Remembering Blue My debut poetry collection is called Remembering Blue after a line in the opening poem, Haiku. The poem was my first attempt at writing in this difficult Japanese short-form poetry style. I’m still not sure if I fulfil all the demands of Haiku traditionalists, but…

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Welcome to my website where I publish regular blogs about subjects that interest me, concern me, or are just about my work as a writer.

As well as the blogs there are also photographs and short videos mostly inspired by my poetry or just because I want to share them.

I am Colin Bell, an Anglo-Irish European citizen based in the UK. I am a novelist and poet, previously a TV producer-director of arts programmes for British, American, German and Japanese broadcasters. I am also known as the blogger Wolfie Wolfgang.

My two novels are Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) and Blue Notes, Still Frames (Ward Wood Publishing, 2017). They are both available in paperback or as Kindle editions. My debut poetry collection, Remembering Blue (Ward Wood Publishing 2019) is now available. My poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies in the UK and the USA.

Remembering Blue is the debut poetry collection by Colin Bell, whose novels Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love and Blue Notes, Still Frames are also published by Ward Wood.

‘These poems were written during ten years recovering from a life-threatening brain haemorrhage.

‘The poems began before I left hospital. They document, often tangentially, that period, from awakening out of a six-hour coma, through several years of rehabilitation, remembering and decoding – the good things as well as the bad: childhood and adolescence revisited, adult relationships reassessed, and most significantly, what is important now that I am fully recovered.

‘Awakening from that death-like coma was a rebirth. When things were difficult, it helped to remember blue.’

– Colin Bell

It’s Brighton in 1994 Busker Joe lives on the beach with his flute and his troubled Goth girlfriend, Victoria, who’s a singer. He borrows a bath towel for her from Rachel and Alan, a prosperous young couple from the rapidly growing world of computers. The meeting will change all their lives…and other lives too.

There’s Harry, a beach bum drummer; Nico, a transient American who takes revealing photographs of passers-by; Kanti and Diep, mysterious artist twins from Nepal; Lionel and John who reveal more than their bodies on the nudist beach; and pub landladies Jacqueline and Rosemary who top up their income by dabbling in the sex trade.

Joe is always there, somewhere, weaving more than melodies with his flute.

– Colin Bell

It’s 1967 and the start of the Summer of Love. In Brighton, Stephen Dearsley is tempted and intimidated by the way his generation is casting off traditional ways of dress along with the old ways of thinking. His ambition to become a biographer is fulfilled when he’s commissioned to research the life story of the mysterious Austin Randolph

– Colin Bell

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