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 paradise, the punishment of having to live in our world, the real world. Actually, part of the interest was that people believed the story. If our world is a punishment, it’s of our own making, as today’s impressive idealistic young environmentalists tell us. We fell into paradise, not out of it, and then we messed it up. The real fall of man comes later.

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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.

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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/issue9/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:

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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

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