I try to squeeze the great composer Sibelius into a miniature Fibonacci box.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

I have two new Fibonacci poems published today in the splendid Fibonacci specialist journal, The Fib Review. It's always a challenge to try to squeeze big things into little boxes but I had a go when I picked the great, melancholy and alcoholic Finish composer Jean Sibelius as the subject of one of these miniature syllable-count poems that are based on the so-called Fibonacci Code with the sequence of numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc. In the second poem, I try to take us back to our common ancestry in Africa.

Here's the link - there are a lot of other Fibs there too - well worth you reading.

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

If you have never heard Sibelius' music, take a listen to this, the finale from his 5th Symphony. It is thrilling - you might even hear those swans flying.

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:

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:

No pretence - hand on heart: I'm thrilled to have my Fibonacci poem nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

I'm thrilled this week to be told that I've been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize by American publisher Musepie Press who have been publishing my poetry in two of their journals, Shot Glass Journal and The Fib Review since 2009.

The nominated poem, Visitation, is published with three of my other new Fibonacci poems in the new issue of The Fib Review which has now published 57 of my Fibs, short poems written to a syllable count according to the Hindu-Arabic numerical system introduced to the West by the Medieval mathematician Leonardo Bonacci (c.1170 - c.1250), known as Fibonacci.

Fibonacci's statue in Pisa.

The Fibonacci Sequence finds a pattern in numbers - one that is repeated in nature but which can also be an exacting but satisfying master for short form poetry. It has been my personal passion for some years now discovering how varied the possibilities are in writing within such a tight set of criteria.

My Pushcart nominated poem, Visitation can be found by following this link:

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

So thank you Musepie Press, on behalf of all Fibonacci poets,  for nominating my poem.

Here is some information about the Pushcart Prize:
'The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America.

Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in our annual collections. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series. Every volume contains an index of past selections, plus lists of outstanding presses with addresses.

The Pushcart Prize has been a labor of love and independent spirits since its founding. It is one of the last surviving literary co-ops from the 60's and 70's. Our legacy is assured by donations to our Fellowships endowment.'

Here's the link to the Pushcart Prize website:

http://pushcartprize.com/index.html

My one-eyed neighbour makes it into one of my newly published Fibonacci poems.

I'm often under scrutiny in my small Lewes urban garden but I'm getting used to it. I live next door to a one-eyed Siamese cat and, without actually being on speaking terms, we have a pleasant enough relationship which I have now recorded in one of my new Fibonacci poems published today in Issue 22 of  The Fib Review.

Sometimes it's good to have a solid but silent relationship with someone who likes my garden as much as I do.

If you want to read my new poem along with the other three poems in The Fib Review, here's a link:

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

Don't just read it for my work though - there's a lot in this excellent journal and i'm proud to be included there again for the eighteenth consecutive time.

My three Fibonacci poems about the composer Tchaikovsky published in The Fib Review.

Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)

My three new Fibonacci poems about the Russian composer Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) were published yesterday in that pioneering and Fibonacci-dedicated online journal, The Fib Review. I hope you'll take a moment to follow the link and read them and the other poems there. My poems were written as I came to the end of  Tchaikovsky's life in my seventeen year chronological journey through the history of classical music from the year 1100 until my planned ending date 1897 (Brahms' death) - this project has been often discussed in these blogs. I have now moved on to 1894 - only three years to go - and with the closing of 1893 came the end of Tchaikovsky after I have listened to almost all of his works in time order.  I used to sneer at Tchaikovsky when I was a teenager, thinking him a tunesmith but little more. I've changed my mind and now, while still recognising that his worst works are extremely dull, his greatest pieces are truly original and very great indeed. I'm listing some of the very best here and they stand up as powerful works of genius. So, if for nothing else and if you still don't believe me, listen (or listen again) to the 6th symphony (Pathetique), the ballet score for The Sleeping Beauty,  the opera Eugene Onegin and, for all its organisational flaws, the always brashly brilliant, First Piano Concerto.  I shall return to them often. It was a tough project to try and say anything worthwhile about the man in the challenging miniature form of Fibonacci poetry.

Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (1831 - 1894)

I've also written a Fibonacci poem about Tchaikovsky's patroness, the enigmatic Baroness Nadezhda von Meck (1831 - 1894) who supported Tchaikovsky for years after hearing an early performance of the First Piano Concerto in a concert only weeks after the death of her husband. It was a passionate relationship conducted by letter because the Baroness insisted that they should never meet. 

Pierre Moskaleff

The third Fibonacci poem deals with the dedication of one of the composer's last piano pieces, the melancholy Berceuse, Op. 72 No. 2 written in the last year of Tchaikovsky's life. This lullaby is dedicated to a man called Pierre Moskaleff from Odessa. No one has managed to trace this man so all we have is his name, the town he came from and this lovely piece. We can only guess at the nature of their relationship but the piece has a feverish passion which certainly supplies a few clues.

So, please take a look at my three Tchaikovsky poems and enjoy The Fib Review. This is its 21st issue and my sixteenth consecutive appearance in it. Thanks are due, yet again, to its editor, the always energetic Mary-Jane Grandinetti.


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

If you'd like to hear that piano piece, Tchaikovsky's Berceuse Op. 72 No. 2, here it is played by the young Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray:

And, go on, I know you want to hear at least the opening of the First Piano Concerto and here it is performed by the legendary American pianist Van Cliburn in Moscow, 1962. He was accompanied by Kirill Kondrashin:

The publication of a Fibonacci poem and another poetry anthology brighten my Lewes weekend.

I've had a mini-run on poetry publication over the weekend. I've just received a copy of a new poetry anthology, Tic Toc,  published by the American company Kind Of Hurricane Press and including my poem Over Time. All the poems are, in different ways, "time tunnels" and I'm proud to be included. It was a good weekend because I also heard that I have a new Fibonacci poem, The Kiss,  in #18 of the specialist Fibonacci poetry journal, The Fib Review published by another American publisher, Musepie Press. I'm especially proud of being there because it continues my relationship with this pioneering venture, the World's premier Fibonacci publisher. I have had my Fib poems included in every issue since #5 so this is my lucky thirteenth appearance.   It's great when I'm so involved in my novel writing that poetry keeps encouraging me to keep the poems coming too. Here's the link:

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

The new anthology is also good news as it adds to the growing number of poetry anthologies to include my work.

If you want to read them, you can find on them using the following links:


Tic Toc published by Kind Of A Hurricane Press:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tic-Toc-Various-Authors/dp/149950196X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404121393&sr=1-1&keywords=Tic+Toc

Reaching Out published by Cinnamon Press:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reaching-Out-Other-Stories-Poems/dp/1907090886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404121482&sr=1-1&keywords=Reaching+Out+Rowan+B.+Fortune

George Best, Miss World and Me: What better subject for my latest Fibonacci Poem?

George Best and Mary Stävin.

As a youngish man in the early days of my career in television, I had the intriguing and unlikely job of having a breakfast meeting with one of the most talked-about of all British footballers, the legendary George Best. We were scheduled to meet in London at the decidedly posh restaurant in up-market department store, Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly. I arrived as myself, a media type, an unglamorous journo on day-release. He arrived with his current girlfriend, the then Miss World, the very beautiful Swedish actress, Mary Stävin, best known, perhaps, as one of the 'Bond Girls' in the James Bond movie, Octopussy.

Mary Stävin and Roger Moore in the James bond movie,Octopussy.

 The photograph above of George and Mary was taken that year and shows that they were, no exaggeration, a very handsome couple. Not only was I the odd-one out in the glamour stakes but I had no interest either in the Miss World contest or football.

George Best in action.

Strangely, we all got on really well - well enough for me to tell George that I was hoping to get fit and had recently started going to a once-a-week fitness class at the Stretford Leisure Centre in Greater Manchester. OK, I know, not very cool. The rest of the breakfast, when the work had been done, was devoted to this famous and now ( for a time) sober athlete giving me one-to-one advice on my fitness regime. He told me I was wasting my time only taking exercise once a week and, it was thanks to him, that I started the regular fitness regime that I have followed ever since that day. I owe it all to George.

I've been writing a lot of what is known as Fibonacci poetry in the last seven years and, recently, I've been fitting some of my television career memories into this toughly disciplined short form style where each line has to  conform to a strict syllabic count using the arithmetic code popularised in Europe by the medieval Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci. This weekend six of my new poems were published in the specialist Fibonacci journal,  Musepie Press' The Fib Review, and one of them was my poem about George. My thanks, as always to Mary-Jane Grandimetti, the editor of The Fib Review, who has encouraged me since my early days as a poet and who has now published 49 of my Fibs in 16 consecutive issues of her great journal.

Here is the page featuring my George Best poem but, for the rest of my Fibs and for many more by other poets, click on the link below:

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

If you're a real glutton for punishment, click on the writer archive section and you'll find links to all 49 of my Fibonacci poems.

 Meanwhile, I have to start thinking about #21 of The Fib Review hoping to come up with something to send in  next time.

The Beatle, the Cardinal, the Poet and the Prime Minister - my meetings with famous people memorialised in my newly published Fibonacci poems.

A page from the latest issue of The Fib Review

This isn't the first time that I've written about my Fibonacci poetry on these pages but today, I'm particularly thrilled that I have ten new poems published in The Fib Review #19 which came out over the weekend. These poems, written to a syllable count taking self-imposed rules from the medieval Italian arithmetician, Leonardo Fibonacci, the so-called Fibonacci Sequence when a pattern is seen in the relationship between  numbers written to the pattern 1: 1 : 2 : 3 : 5 : 8 :13 : 21 : 34  etc. etc.  At it's simplest the pattern means that each number is the sum of the previous two but you can, of course, reverse the order and do a whole number of variations. I've loved imposing this discipline on my poetry and now, thanks to the continuing support of The Fib Review's editor Mary-Jane Grandinetti, I have been writing 'Fibs' for over five years, forty-five of them published in fifteen consecutive issues of The Fib Review, the World's leading Fibonacci publisher. Heres' the link where you will find my ten poems plus a whole lot more.  http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

Leonardo Fibonacci (1170 - 1240)

This summer I've been sorting all my Fibonacci poetry into some kind of order, there are now 62 of them, and found that they sat together happily enough and, without being a literal narrative, they tell the story of my many brief encounters with people in my personal life but also in the years when I worked in television. Sorting them out and writing some to fill the gaps, it was a bit like putting together a photograph album so, it was not much of a struggle to call the collection, Brief Encounters. Some of the latest poems have been about meetings with famous people, some admired, some feared and some disliked. It's possibly a form of poetic name-dropping but I hope it adds up to more than that. Not all the encounters were with the famous - some are friends, some strangers and, a few, are imaginary encounters with some of my fears and obsessions.

In Issue 19 of The Fib Review,  four of the ten poems deal with my meetings with the famous - vivid memories all. As all four are now deceased, it seemed like a good idea to memorialise those brief encounters among my latest Fibonacci experiments with minimalism. I hope you'll enjoy them.

Beatle George Harrison (1943 - 2001)

Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997)

Cardinal Basil Hume  (1923 - 1999)

 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925 - 2013)

Marcel Proust's rudeness and Lazarus' shock are the themes for my two newly published Fibonacci poems.

Maybe we don't take madeleine cakes enough with weak black tea. I've only had the proper French version of these little cakes once but I can see why the French novelist Marcel Proust (1871–1922) rated them so highly in his massive seven volume novel In Search of Lost Time ( À la recherche du temps perdu). In the first volume of the novel, Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (1913), the central character, Marcel, experiences what's known as involuntary memory when he tastes one of the cakes dipped into his tea. It opens his memory to scenes of his childhood which begin the epic and apparently sprawling work that is the longest novel in any language. I'm currently on the third volume The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) (1920/1921) - I'm reading it on my Kindle in the English Moncheiff/Hudson/Kilmartin translation but also, from time to time, comparing the text with the original French which is, sadly, above my reading abilities. I hope to finish this self-imposed but highly enjoyable project by the end of the year.

Why are you telling me this? I hear you ask. Well, some time ago, I decided to write a Fibonacci poem about the Proust's madeleine cake incident, imagining what he might have said to me if we were to have met. I'm afraid I imagined our meeting as being uncomfortable and, on his side, rather sneering in the manner occasionally taken when French intellectuals talk to the English.

Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

I liked the idea of writing an extremely short poem in the Fibonacci arithmetical system in answer to the epic-writer Proust's imagined put-down. At the weekend, the poem, Time Past,  along with another of my new Fibs, was published in Musepie Press's 17th issue of the excellent Fibonacci journal, The Fib Review.

If you'd like to read my poem, here's the link:

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

The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1609 by Caravaggio.  Museo Regionale, Messina

The second Fibonacci poem is Lazarus. It is also about my memory of a vivid moment. Lazarus was the man Jesus brought back from the dead in one of his most dramatic miracles. I had often wondered what it must have actually felt like to find yourself relaunched into life in such a startling way. The thought returned to me once when I was being discharged from hospital after a serious illness. Here's a link to my poem:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/colin_bell2.html

My thanks, once more, are due to Mary-Jane Grandimetti, the editor of The Fib Review, for choosing to publish my work yet again. I have had poems in this publication  thirteen consecutive issues. I'm now putting my mind to writing some more poetry in this style where the syllable or word count has to correspond to Fibonacci's sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. Maybe you should have a go too.

Stephen Dearsley goes to London along with some of my poetry on an inspiring and truly literary weekend.

I was in London last Friday to read from my book, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love (published by Ward Wood) at the Polari Literary Salon at the Southbank Centre.

As I was walking to Lewes station to catch my train,  a double rainbow formed in the sky above me. I know it has a scientific explanation but, for a moment or two, I allowed myself to see it as a symbol. Traditionally double rainbows are meant to represent a time of transformation where the spiritual and the worldly combine. I don't know about that but it was a wonderful sign of encouragement as I headed off to one of the largest, and most receptive, audiences I have ever had to face.

It certainly felt like a moment of transformation standing there in front of an audience of nearly 300 attentive listeners at the sold out event.

They laughed in all the right places with an ear for any nuanced humour that might appear in my work.

I was reading a chapter from my novel and also some of my poetry which also seemed to hold their attention.

It was a perfect audience and a superbly organised event. My thanks and admiration then to  the inspiring Paul Burston who invited me to perform there with fellow writers Jonathan Broughton,  Musa Okwonga, my friend, the ebullient but hard-hitting Rose Collis and another friend, fellow Ward Wood novelist, the mordantly witty, Vg Lee. It was a terrific night so thanks to everyone who made it so special. Thanks to that double rainbow too.

It turned into a very literary weekend as I was also scheduled to read my poetry at Lewes' Hop Gallery where my friends Dawn and David Stacey have a new exhibition (1 - 13 March) which includes a framed copy of a poem I wrote for Dawn incorporating my impressions of her paintings, one of which I own.

I'll write more about this tomorrow but, if you can get there, do try to see their work.

More of my poetry reached another audience too on Sunday when two of my new Fibonacci poems were published in the seventeenth issue of the Fib Review. If you want to read my new Fibs, here's the link:

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

I shall come back to The Fib Review in a blog later this week but I'm thrilled that my Fibonacci poems continue to be published by this splendid American journal.

That double rainbow wasn't joking - it really was a truly transformational weekend.