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 bed. Later, at my secondary school, there was a short morning chapel service every day and, yet again, there we all were, on our knees, often praying for forgiveness for sins we planned to commit as soon as the next opportunity arose.

It’s no surprise that my mind wandered at time like these. At first it was:

Who is this God? Can he really hear me? I don’t want to stop being proud of some things. Why are some sins more fun than other? Why do we have to be on our knees? The floor boards are very uncomfortable to kneel on. Are we meant to be this uncomfortable? How long is this going to last?

Then, when I realised that there was no escape from the torture, I just gave it to my fears. I thought of being beaten (‘bend over, boy!’) and then I thought of all those people, mostly kings and queens, from history books having their heads cut off. King Charles I’s execution gave me nightmares. Even he had to kneel like this, I thought.

Praying became something scary. Kneeling in a church pew, head bowed over the shelf where the prayers books go, it was like putting your head on the block. Don’t close your eyes – something bad will will happen.

These memories came back to me when I wrote the poem Kneeling that is in my newly published poetry collection, Remembering Blue. I thought I would make a short film of the poem too – here it is:

These days, I seldom kneel except when I’m doing the weeding.

Remembering Blue (Ward Wood Publishing) can be bought in all the usual places – maybe it’s easiest to order online from Wordery who give free world-wide postage.

https://wordery.com/remembering-blue-colin-bell-9781908742704?cTrk=MTU4MTA4MjIwfDVkMzBhOTY1YTQwMTc6MTo1OjVkMzBhOTQzNWJjMDkxLjAzNDg4OTU1OjgzZTNlYjNl&fbclid=IwAR3b-2JitQhwRHeP77gwSr_V8egSKdczwZ-BMix97230qXZyiZ1rLgmTQKc

The digital edition is available on Kindle and can be ordered from Amazon in your country.

The post Kneeling can give you nightmares – I wrote a poem about it. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

This week sees the publication of my debut poetry collection, Remembering Blue by Ward Wood Publishing. The poems were written over a period of ten years (2008 – 2018) and, even though I am also lucky enough to have two novels published (Also by Ward Wood), with two more on the way, there is something very special about having a book of my poems in print.

My first instinct when it came out was to hide, but I’m over that now that it is time to tell people about it, and to say how thrilling it is to hold such a stylishly-produced book in my hands. Thanks are especially due to Ward Wood and its inspirational publisher Adele Ward, who was the first to suggest that I try my hand at writing poetry.

I must also thank the book’s cover designer, Kayla Bell. I think it’s simply beautiful. If you see a resemblance to the cover for my second novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames, that’s because Kayla designed that cover too. Many thanks!

When the publishers’ asked me to write some suggestions for the back cover blurb, I felt stumped, and wondered if I even knew what these poems were ‘about’ – I’m probably the last one to know but I scribbled this and it will do, I guess.

‘These poems were written during ten years recovering from a life-threatening brain haemorrhage. Poetry writing itself began for me then. The severity of the injury released hidden and repressed feelings, it began a process of rewiring my brain, focusing my mind on what life really meant, or should mean, for me.  I was warned that I would probably cry more easily than before. That was both true and beneficial. The poems began before I left hospital. They document, often tangentially, that period, from awakening from a six-hour coma with a mysteriously fractured spine, 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 importantly, 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.

The title comes from the opening poem:

Haiku

This blank page is grey

I shall write rain and cloud here

but remember blue.

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