Welcome to Glinka Gallery, it’s open 24/7. it has six individual galleries for fine art, photography, poetry, dance and music and it is just a few finger clicks away from you wherever you are. I want to show you around.

I have always been involved with the arts world, from my student days, through many years making arts programmes for television, as a writer and, these days also as the artistic director of a virtual art gallery, Glinka Gallery, in the ‘multi-player virtual world’ called Second Life, where I have the virtual name, Wolfgang Glinka.

Wolfgang Glinka and Colin Bell are interchangeable versions of the person known as Me, and my gallery, is an extension of many of the things I have done and others that I have dreamed of doing before anyone even imagined the enormous potential of virtual reality. Virtual reality, is as its name implies just another form of reality. Here, as you can see in my welcome notice to virtual visitors to the gallery, I have been able to curate an extraordinary group of artists from most branches of the arts – fine art, photography, poetry, dance and music. Actually all of my artistic passions.

Over the eight years of Glinka Gallery’s existence, and now in in fourth rebuild, we are getting bigger and bigger, the gallery has shown regular exhibitions by a family of regular artists, including our resident artist, Lash vv, creatives in both virtual and real worlds, who find freedom and support at what has now become more than a gallery, more of a creative arts centre.

We now have an ever-growing permanent collection of some of the work by our exhibitors over the years. I think of them as my friends.

I am a writer, a novelist and poet, and I have been experimenting here at the gallery with ways of putting poetry, in particular, on the walls, along with fine art. Therefore I have built specific spaces for poetry and created a role for a resident poet (Shyla the Super Gecko) who holds regular poetry reading events here.

I also put on exhibitions of my own work, especially my Fibs, short-form Fibonacci poems which lend themselves to life on the wall as well as on the page. They have their own home in the Fibonacci Gallery.

Here is my, well, Wolfgang Glinka’s short film of his, well my Fib, Reflections, published by The Fib Review and now also viewable on Youtube.

We also have a resident dance troupe, 21 Parakeets, directed by Joseph Nussbaum, a composer and choreographer, who has sought to make contemporary dance an equal partner here with fine art and poetry. His work is inspired by the wish to show challenging but also entertaining dance shows in our own custom built dance theatre, the Aviary Theatre, built by our buildings director, Tony Marino.

Since I’ve been running the Glinka Gallery, I have been able to develop my interest in photography, often too far down the list of my priorities, in a busy writing schedule. In the last eight years I have been pushing myself to make my photography an equal form of expression with my poetry. At first, I made photography exhibitions of my work mostly shot on foreign trips, buy recently I have developed my interest in photo-art, mostly known as digital photo-editing or image manipulation. This is a completely new world for me and I was excited to find I could attract a large audience for the first of my recent shows, Ecce Homo, (Behold the Man), an examination of masculinity at a time of crisis in male identity.

My most recent show is Dead Poets in Love, Queer Writers from Shakespeare to Burroughs. Here I am trying another experiment in bringing writing and photography together. This has been, maybe my longterm ambition for most of my life. In the gallery the texts float as an ethereal presence in front of my manipulated images of the writers themselves. In the movie of the show, I decided that it was better to leave out the texts. Maybe I will take this idea further in my next projects.

If the potential of the arts in the virtual world is new to you, and if you are interested to come to Glinka Gallery and to the other arts venues in the often under-estimated virtual platform, Second Life, https://secondlife.comhere is a brief look. We hope to see you there, maybe.

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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 drawing to classical oil painting, to achieve inspirational, passionate and ecstatic work on spiritual, erotic, wild life and primeval themes.

Glinka Gallery has now held four shows of his work and the latest one, Animal Instinct, currently running, includes his picture, Fight, above, an enigmatic portrayal of two stags in deadly but seemingly nervous conflict. When we were hanging the pictures at the gallery, there was a space next to this work and Nikola asked me if I had a suitable poem to put there – one that reflected some of the themes of his show. I thought about this for a moment or two but had to say no, I had written nothing that could do that job and then, after another moment or two, I said I would try to write him a poem to hang there. The result was a new Fibonacci poem, a Fib, entitled Rutting which I dedicated to him and subsequently submitted to the excellent online poetry journal The Fib Review, https://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/ a specialist in Fibonacci poetry and a great supporter of my syllable-based work in this form.

I was particularly happy to write a poem for Nikola and I saw it as a kind of reciprocal act as a few years ago, he painted a picture for me called Remembering Blue, the title of my poetry collection and a quote from the opening poem there, my Haiku. https://www.bookdepository.com/Remembering-Blue-Colin-Bell/9781908742704

Unsurprisingly, Nikola came up with a picture that was totally unexpected, but which penetrated behind some of the things I was trying to say in my collection. It was a kind of artistic tit for tat. I hope we will work like this more often.

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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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If you’ve found my website then you’ll be at least partially internet savvy and, before you hurtle off on your travels around the worldwide web, I’d like to thank you for stopping for a moment and, while you’re here, I’d like to tell you about some of my adventures in cyber space.

I’m lucky enough to spend most of my working day writing – either poetry or fiction – so a lot of my life unfurls in front of my trusty computer up here in a small room at the top of my house a small market town in the UK. Anyone who has ever written anything of any length on an old-fashioned typewriter will know that computer word-processing has replaced typing hell with a walk in the park. Computers are an essential in my life,  no matter how many luddites bemoan the effects of computers on the modern world.

It’s not just the word-processing that has revolutionised my life. The world-wide web, the internet, has opened up so many opportunities for writers, like me,  who mostly live solitary lives alone with their obsessions. It’s not just the access to information that has helped me in my struggles, it is the access to an international community of writers whom I can meet on-line without having to leave my cosy nest. I’m not just talking about social media even though sites such as Facebook and Twitter provide marvellous opportunities for those ‘water-cooler’ moments when you don’t work in an office or a factory and you fancy a break from writing. Over the years, I’ve made many good friends over the internet many of whom, I’ve gone on to meet face to face. I love the way I can mix my writerly need for solitude with the extrovert joy I get from conversation – so easily achieved with a click on a keyboard.

The biggest online difference to my life as a writer has come from my experience in those often misunderstood sites known as virtual worlds. Some years ago, I found the most famous of those sites, Second Life, and experimented with it as an amusing game. The idea was to imagine what it would be like if you really could have a second life. You had to create an avatar, at first a clumsily comical animated cartoon, and then there you were – it was all up to you. That was when I ‘created’ my avatar Wolfgang Glinka who was really just another manifestation of Wolfie Wolfgang my cyber name but, of course, agelessly youthful and shamelessly trendy.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that the more I experimented in this alternative life, I merely found more of myself. Wolfgang Glinka, Wolfie Wolfgang, Colin Bell, three-in-one and one-in-three – actually, technology apart, they are, of course, the same person. If Colin Bell is a poet and a novelist in the ‘real world’ then so is Wolfgang Glinka in Second Life.

It didn’t take long to enter the various writing communities in Second Life and, for a number of years now, I’ve been hosting my own weekly poetry event called Wolfie’s Poetry Surf with an open-to-all open mic hour mixed with readings of my own poetry. It is now an established event with poets attending, in the wonderful way of the internet, from all over the world. We’ve had Brits, Americans, Australians, Dutch, Chinese, Singaporeans, French, Georgians, Germans, Italians, Jamaicans, Spaniards and Portuguese among our regulars and many more nationalities besides. The worldwide web makes us truly international just as you, my blog readers, come from every nation in the world.

I particularly value the opportunity to test out new work at these meetings with such a great community of writers. Last night, I tried out recent re-writings that I’ve been making to some of the poems I wrote when I first dared to try my hand at poetry. What looked OK on the page, didn’t always work when read out-loud and I found myself making alterations as I read. It is a wonderful opportunity for any poet wannabe so I’m forever grateful to Second Life.

If you fancy turning up for one of our sessions, it’s not as difficult as you’d think. We meet every Thursday at 1pm American East Coast time (9pm Greenwich Mean Time) and all you have to do is follow this link into Second Life (which is free) and spend a short time making a simple avatar – all is explained and, believe me, it is very easy.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/56/238/21

It would be great to see you there.

Here are some of my other Second Life poetry events:

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Eight years ago, I took my first timorous steps into the virtual computer world known as Second Life. It was an extraordinarily confusing experience having to create a new image for oneself in a massive online animated game where you  begin with nothing and, ideally, pursue or discover dreams of what you might do if you really did get the chance of a second life. Eight years ago, my second life persona, Wolfgang Glinka, couldn’t even walk across a room without falling over – a bit like an infant in so many ways. Eight years on and I am, I guess, a veteran of this world and I have had a truly interesting time. Now, for the first time, I’ve collaborated in making a film, Sortie, which is premiered (on Youtube) today.

I perform poetry a lot in Second Life, running a poetry event every Thursday, Wolfie’s Poetry Surf, when I’m joined, live, by poets from all over the ‘real’ world. Now, both my lives, real and second, have combined giving me many chances of crossing backwards and forwards between them as I pursue all the writing possibilities that come my way. Now, I am Colin Bell, Wolfie Wolfgang or Wolfgang Glinka, a triple personality perhaps but no, not really. I’ve just embraced the wonderful possibilities, if used wisely, that the worldwide web offers us all.

The film, directed by the splendid Boris Twist is a visualisation of my poem, Sortie, written earlier this year but promptly forgotten until Boris asked me if I had anything dark enough for a Halloween film.  Once I’d found it, it became a real pleasure for Colin Bell to record it and for Wolfgang Glinka to appear as narrator.

Take a look – I’m thrilled by Boris’ clever use of my poetry. Most important of all, the whole project was fun.

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Believe it or not, blog-readers, there is still a lot of prejudice around concerning on-line networks and so-called virtual worlds. We are not far enough away from the 20th Century yet for some people to see that there is no great difference between communication media – for good or for ill. The tabloid print press, every now and then, run a story about how this marriage broke up because of a relationship formed in the virtual world of Second Life or that a child became hooked on war games or someone else found some other on-line addiction. Well, we humans fail, fall and get addicted to almost anything and, if the sensational world revolution that is the web has to get the blame then, blame too, newspapers, films, television, the telephone, letter-writing, conversations at the supermarket check-out, anything where human speaks to human. I am thinking in particular about Second Life today because I have some experience of this international network of strangely animated avatars who can speak freely to fellow humans in any country in the world because it is free in all senses of that word. These people, because behind each avatar is an individual human being, can explore wherever their imaginations lead them. I am a fan of communication, freedom and the imagination and I discovered that in Second Life, all of these things are in abundance.

For me, it’s a very creative place with a lively literary world where, like last night, you can put on an exhibition of poetry and people come to it from all over the World. I run a gallery in a place called Book Island and often hold other poetry events at a village known as Written Word and have done since my brain haemorrhage of nearly five years ago when going out at all would have been impossible. In both places, it is quite difficult to find a philistine or a modern art cynic and last night, at the opening of my exhibition, the conversation was about poetic form and writing styles with people coming to explore the world of Fibonacci Poetry without any prejudices or preconceptions.

In this virtual world, we have to make everything ourselves, or get help from clever friends – that is how my gallery, Wolfanatolia was born. I then had a space to fill with 40 of my Fibonacci poems along with some of my photographs which, I hoped, were complimentary to the poetic themes. These little arithmetically conceived poems take concentration from reader and writer alike so I was thrilled to find such an intent and appreciative audience for these little Minimalist pieces that I have put together into a sequence when previously they have had to stand alone – mostly individually published in succeeding issues of that pioneering journal, the Fib Review. Here is a link if you’d like to read some of my work and also Fibonacci poems by many other poets from a round the world:

www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/

I had never read them as a sequence out-loud before and didn’t know if they were going to work as performance pieces. Second Life, not for the first time, gave me the chance to find out.

In the audience there were people from Hawaii, India, Singapore, California, South Carolina, Tennessee,  New York City,  London, Manchester, Wales, Lisbon and Paris. I was there too without having to leave my hometown of Lewes in the UK.

We were all linked up visually and aurally by the amazingly clear telecommunication that is Second Life. An international conference call with a difference perhaps and absolutely free. It is in moments like this that I feel hopeful about our planet Earth. Moments when we don’t have to worry about presidents, dictators and generals or even the sneers from that great army, the silent majority of reactionaries.

I think my Fibonacci Sequence, Brief Encounters, worked as spoken word – I hope it did, the audience thought so anyway. They stayed for the excellent live music provided by my friend Brendan Shoreland,  singer-songwriter, a Yorkshireman from Plymouth,  who also finds inspiration in virtual worlds. People even stayed  afterwards to walk round the exhibition.

I am not alone in finding inspiration in the technology that allows like-minded people anywhere in the world to share ideas and creative endeavours,  I met Adele Ward, the future publisher of my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, at just such an event as last night. She is one of the pioneers of bringing  and developing literature in virtual worlds. I have grown as a writer since visiting this place and see it now as yet another inspiring part of my always interesting life.

So don’t laugh when you hear people talk about virtual worlds because you might just be missing something. You might even be wrong. OK, then, laugh if you want to, sometimes it’s safer that way.

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My first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, is published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

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My novel is about to be published, the date is yet to be announced, but last night, ahead of its “Real World” launch it was launched in the virtual world of Second Life which is also a virtual haven for writing and writers. Apparently I am the first novelist to be contracted by a publisher in this way – Ward Wood Publishing is breaking new ground here at a time when all the publishing rules are being rewritten.

I am told that my book, in its hardback edition and then in other media, will be available very soon but you can check on the details on the Ward Wood Publishing website

(see Links in the right hand column). It is called Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (credited to my real name, Colin Bell) and, let me admit this, I am very excited.

I have been writing and doing poetry readings in Second Life and other online sites as well as here in the UK and recently in the USA for several years now but it was appropriate that my first novel should be celebrated in Second Life where I have a lot of friends and where I have learnt a lot about writing and performance.

Whilst I was recovering from my brain haemorrhage, which I suffered three years ago this month, my animated avatar, who is also Wolfie, was much freer to mix in the outside world and he enabled me, here in “reality,” to stop going crazy confined to my house in Lewes. He is allowed to smoke too!

So after all the writing, the book is allowed out of its closet. It is a strange experience when a large writing project leaves the protected world of your own imagination for the broad bright light of the World.  I hope you all will be kind to it.

Last night was special though as it was not only a wonderful and well attended event but it was also the moment when my real and virtual selves got to meet in public. Thanks to everyone who turned up and supported me.

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