Numbers count in Fibonacci Poetry - and for The Fib Review's anniversary issue.

I'm celebrating today and it's not all about numbers. They figure strongly in writing the usually short poetry form the Fibonacci poem which is based on the so-called Fibonacci Sequence of numbers.

The latest issue of  the world's leading Fibonacci poetry journal, The Fib Review, is published today in its 25th issue on its 10th anniversary and, yes, my four new Fibs  bring my total 66 of poems published by the Fib Review. All these numbers are worth celebrating I think.

It may all look a bit dusty and arithmetical in the diagram but these numbers form a beautiful sequence that can be found in nature, in science,  in engineering and, yes, in art. The sequence consists of numbers where each  is the sum of the previous two, rising in numerical order and which can be seen in natural shapes  made from this ratio of numbers. It is the beauty of the sequence that has tempted poets to use the sequence as a way of ordering words and lines in poetry.

I have been writing Fibonacci poetry for eight years now by counting the syllables in each line so that the lines correspond to the sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34.  Until now, I've never dared to go any higher in the numerical order but in two of my new poems I have added 55 syllable lines. I'm delighted that they are to be included in the new publication of The Fib Review. Take a look, not just for my new poems but for the fascinating variations on the form achieved by all the other poets, from all over the world,  published there:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

Leonardo Bonacci, known as Fibonacci (c1170 - c1250)

The Fibonacci Sequence is credited to the Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci who was also known as Fibonacci. He introduced this ancient Asian sequence into Western Europe in the 13th Century and it has fascinated mathematicians, scientists, artists, engineers and poets ever since.

And now my Fibonacci Poem Brief Encounter gets the movie treatment.

In a collaboration with the multi talented American film-maker Joseph Nussbaum, another of my Fibonacci poems has been turned into a miniature movie using the virtual world of Second Life as its starting point. The result, I think, is really original. The poem, Brief Encounter (published in The Fib Review - Musepie Press) makes a romantic and powerful film . The poem was written in strict syllabic count according to the Fibonacci Sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc.) and is one of many of my 'Fibs' to be published in that excellent poetry journal The Fib Review. Here's a link to the poem as it appeared there in 2011: http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/…/wolfiewolfgang4.html


The very concise form of the poetic style translates well into the equally concise filming style of Joseph Nussbaum - it was a happy coming together of different art forms making, I think, what looks like a Contemporary Dance piece. Poetry and Dance as Film - a great combination. Take a look:

My miniature Fibonacci poem The Music Of The Spheres becomes a movie - Wow!

I wrote a miniature Fibonacci poem five years ago on the gigantic subject of humanity's ideas of the Universe and religion - well, there's no need for humility if you're writing a very short poem. It was called The Music Of The Spheres and was published in that excellent poetry journal The Fib Review:  http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/issue10/wolfiewolfgang2.html - I hadn't thought about it much since then until recently when the highly imaginative Joseph Nussbaum approached me asking to make a short animated film of the poem.

I was thrilled earlier on today to see the result. Wow! I think it's magnificent. See what you think:

"Music of the Spheres", a video by Joseph Nussbaum. FIlmed in Second Life. Poem by Colin Bell. Music by Moby. Sculpture by François Arteo. With Marly Moon, Joseph Nussbaum, Boris Twist, Bryan Trefoill, and Novs Morlim.

Me, Marc Bolan and David Bowie - meeting again in The Fib Review.

David Bowie and Marc Bolan in rehearsal at Granada Television in 1977.

In the early years of my TV career at one of Britain's leading independent television companies, Granada, I came across many famous people and soon found out that celebrities, like people you meet in a bus queue, are usually no more extraordinary or unusual than anyone else you might encounter that day. Sometimes though,  even a full-of-himself young TV employee could be impressed by a sudden explosion of star-dust.  First it was Marc Bolan,  the glamourously charismatic lead singer of the band T-Rex. Marc was making a series, called Marc, for Granada and I was working in the music department there. We met over some backing-track issue which is now long forgotten, but we hit it off well enough to go for a few drinks together while he was staying in Manchester. His days of mega-stardom were waning and, sometimes, a beer encouraged him to open his heart. We got on. For the final show in the series, he'd asked his old friend David Bowie to take part. This was a bit of a coup because Bowie at that time had just recorded the album Heroes, one of my favourites,  and he performed the song for the first time in that programme.

I had been a fan of David Bowie since the Ziggy Stardust days and couldn't believe that the great man was actually in the Granada studios. Anyway, he was and, as I found out, he was as normal a bloke as the next man - charming and talented too of course. I was going for what is euphemistically called a bathroom break and it happened to coincide with a break in rehearsals for Marc.  Without a thought, I walked into the male toilets situated under my office and next to the studio entrance. It was there, unglamourously no doubt, I found myself in glittering company. After, the call of nature, three guys washed their hands and Marc introduced me to Bowie, who was quiet, pleasant and remarkably low-key. We shook newly-washed hands and went our separate ways.

Many years later, wanting to make some commemorative gesture after David Bowie's unexpected death, I decided to write one of my Fibonacci poems about the incident. Today, along with two other new poems, it is published in the latest issue of the Fibonacci specialist journal, The Fib Review. I'm an enthusiast for this demanding short-form poetry style and I feel honoured and fortunate that The Fib Review has supported me over the last eight years by publishing my work - with these three new ones, they have now published 62 of my 'Fibs'.

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/

David Bowie, of course, was not the only one of those two stars to have died since that meeting. I met Marc again for a drink before he left Manchester and we said, as you do, we should get together again the next time he was in town. That wasn't to be because a very short time later he was dead, within the month I think, but my memory is unclear about the dates. I was genuinely shocked and saddened after my first real encounter with the death of a celebrity.

So here's to Marc Bolan and David Bowie - it was an honour to  have met you guys.

Here's that recording of David Bowie singing Heroes and then, a clip of the two of them closing that final show:

Photography - at first it was just taking pictures, then I went digital and now I discover Instagram.

I have lived long enough now to have seen a transformation in the art of photography. Not that I'd call myself a photographer, but I been taking photographs since I was a child and I've always been entranced by the possibilities of even the simplest of cameras. As a schoolboy, I won a photographic competition once but that was a long time ago. Since then, I've just been using my various cameras for my own pleasure, mostly as a record of my family and friends but when that amazing digital revolution got to me, in 2007,  I found new excitement with a great digital camera, the Cannon EOS 400D, bought in Hong Kong and loved ever since.  Since living in Lewes, UK, I've been friends with a real photographer, David Stacey http://www.davidstaceyphoto.com/ who has not only inspired me with his own work but encouraged me to experiment more with my own camera.

David Stacey - I dared to take this photograph of the photographer, last year.

Dave even turned his camera on me a few times and this portrait  now hangs on a wall at home - like it or not, I think it captures the spirit of my life here in Lewes.

Me by David Stacey

David Stacey at work in my study.

I spent a day with Dave recently when we went to an exhibition as the excellent Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and, over a boys' pub lunch, we discussed cameras and photography as we often do. It was there that Dave inspired me to give Instagram a go. He said he thought I'd really like this the most  creatively challenging and excitingly instant of all of today's social networking sites. I said I'd have a go and, a month later, I'm still doing it and, yes, loving it too. I've been taking at least one photograph a day for the site and I'm gradually learning how to master the various editing options. You can see how I've been getting on by following the link below.

https://www.instagram.com/colinbellwolfiewolfgang/

The other revolution in my on-line world is that those photographs taken for Instagram can be linked to various other sites - so I'm now an enthusiastic member of the photography site Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16199705@N05/

I'm also linking these shots with that other photography site Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wolfie-wolfgang

I'm enjoying the way my photographs can be sent round the internet with just a couple of clicks and love the way my Instagram photos are also automatically linked to  that other photography site Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/colinbell/photographs-by-colin-bell-wolfiewolfgang/

Needless to say, these pictures also go directly to my Facebook and Twitter pages so after a relative silence here on my website, I'm suddenly all over the wonderful world-wide web and having lots of fun all of which I owe to my good friend David Stacey. Thanks Dave.

I haven't posted many blogs on here this year. Forgive me, regular readers, I've been busy finishing a novel for publication later this year  and now I'm getting on with a new one so I've been heads down all year but plan to get back to blogging again very soon.

In the meanwhile you can follow me on all of the above sites as well as on Facebook and Twitter - I hope to see you around in cyberspace and, of course, here on this site.

My Facebook page.

My Twitter page.

The Legend of The Flying Dutchman miniaturised as one of my latest Fibonacci poems.

Today I'm celebrating the publication of two more of my Fibonacci poems,  Castle Walk and The Flying Dutchman,  in that great specialist Fibonacci journal, The Fib Review which is published today and can be found with the following link:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/colin_bell1.html

The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847 - 1917) Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC

One of my two poems uses The Flying Dutchman as its starting point. The Flying Dutchman legend concerned a cursed sea captain condemned to travel the seas for eternity with a crew of ghosts, only allowed to come ashore once every ten years. Sometimes the ship is called The Flying Dutchman, other versions of the legend claim that the name applies to the unfortunate captain, punished for a serious sin, possibly cursing the Crucifixion.  Wagner wrote a well-known opera on the subject but I was trying something much more modest, a very short syllable-count Fibonacci poem, using the Dutchman as a symbol for a turbulent state of mind. 

I've been writing these challenging short-form poems since 2009 and many of them (well, 59 so far) have been published by The Fib Review.  They are based on the Fibonacci Code,  introduced into Europe in the 13th Century by the Italian mathematician/merchant, Leonardo Bonacci, known as Fibonacci who learnt about on his Arabian travels. The Fibonacci Code is a mathematical system were each number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers. It is, believe me, much more flexible as a poetic form than you might imagine until you try it. Why not have a go.

Fibonacci (Leonardo Bonacci) c.1170 - c.1250

I can't leave you without giving you at least a taste of Wagner's music for The Flying Dutchman - here's New York's  Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted with typical bravura by James Levine:

Silent House - first a poem, now a movie.

My thanks are due to the multi-talented Joseph Nussbaum for his film, so carefully made, of my poem Silent House. It was a great experience sharing brains with such a perceptive director. It's great when that solitary poet life can be shared like this.  I loved Tim Risher's music too. Here are a couple of stills and, below, a copy of the film. Hope you like it...I shall be keeping it, with the other films of my work, in the video column on the right of this page