shot glass
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"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Television producer-director Colin Bell's debut poetry collection Remembering Blue was published in 2019 by Ward Wood Publishing. His second poetry collection, Brief Encounters - 100 Fibs, featuring the poems first published in The Fib Review, is scheduled to be published by Ward Wood Publishing.

His two published novels are Stephen Dearsley's Summer of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) longlisted for the Polari Prize 2014. Blue Notes, Still Frames, (Ward Wood Publishing, 2016). His third novel, Over the Hills is a Long Way Off, will also be published by Ward Wood. A fourth novel is now in its final draft.

His poetry has been published by Cinnamon Press, Frogmore Press, Shot Glass Journal, Soaring Penguin Press, The Fib Review, and a number of anthologies in the US and UK. Several of his fibs have been set to music as the song cycle, Fibonacci Poems (2017) for tenor voice and piano by American composer Tim Risher. In 2020 he was made Musepie Press' Featured International Poet and his Fibonacci poetry has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.


Colin Bell


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Coffee Time

Face-to-face across the diner's Formica
we're rain-damp explorers
hot from the street
on retreat from a summer storm

The New York Times outstretched
headlines spread over the condiment rack
upside-down reading permits distraction
in Chicago Obama doesn't hide his tears

lip-print coffee stains on white porcelain
your wristwatch counts my time in seconds
inside the window sweats droplets
outside opaque hunched figures scuttle

in a dark place under the wipe-down table
legs flex I kick off a shoe
unspoken thoughts behind words exchanged
face-to-face across the diner's Formica