Brindley Hallam Dennis

I’ve written poetry for more than forty years, and fiction since 1998. My writing has been influenced by poets such as Rudyad Kipling, John Berryman and Robert Frost, and of my contemporaries, Norman NIcholson, Geoffrey Holloway and Josephine Dickinson, and by novelists including James Joyce, Cormac McCarthy and Isobel Colegate.

Biography

Brindley Hallam Dennis was born in Burton-on-Trent, 1950. He came to North Cumbria the day before his 21st birthday in 1971, and has remained there ever since, although has not lost his Midlands accent. He’s had many jobs, but no career, and is currently part-time bookseller, part-time garden labourer & part time Creative Writing tutor.

Publication History

Fiction

• That's What Yer Get! Kowalski's Assertions (Unbound Press, 2010)
• The Three Bill Goughs and the Owld Goat (Athregeum, 2010)
• Talking To Maurice won 2nd prize in the Bank Street Writers short story competition, 2009
• The short play, Smokes, a mime with words, ran for a week at the Newtown Theatre during the Sydney Short + Sweet festival in February 2009.
• BHD has been a frequent contributor to the Liars League short story performances in London’s Wheatsheaf pub since early 2008.
• Stories have appeared in Cadenza, Cumbria Life, The Tattoo Highway, Markings, & in the anthology Small Voices/Big Confessions (EditRed, 2006).You can read a review of the latter here.
• Jealousy (SlingInk, 2007)
• The flash fiction, 100% Proof, written as Culbin Forrest is on the Tuesday Shorts website.
• Second Time Around & other Stories (Chelifer, 2005).

Performances

• BHD/MS read poetry and fiction regularly at Carlisle’s Speakeasy, and other venues in north Cumbria. He has read at venues in Lancaster, Millom, & Keswick.
• He was part of the Poetry Doubles series in Dumfries in 2008, reading with Jean Sprackland.
• "Brindley Hallam Dennis stepped to the mic and became Kowalski. An outspoken, crotchety, New Yorker with a fund of tales of escapades with Miriam (Mildred, in fact) ‘she’s my old lady’. Dennis’ glorious performance brought Kowalski truly and uproariously alive, and I’d love to hear more."Kevin McVeigh, The Lunecy Review.

• Listen to Brindley read from The Bath Scene from Unsaid Undone (Flax017)
  
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• Listen to Brindley as Kowalski's OGM on Vanishing Act here

Here, Brindley is performing at the Spotlight Club in Lancaster, November 2009

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Awards

A sequence of five poems, comprisng Ullsawater Requiem, All Things Are Connected, The Flickering, An Instant, & A Falling Frost at Bank House Garden won a Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust award 2009, Edinburgh (poetry.MS)

• The Story Martin won 2nd prize in the Grist short story competition, Huddersfield Literature festival, 2009
  
• The story The Ballad of Matty Lonin won the Cumbria Life magazine Short Story Competition, Carlisle, 2006 (writing as Culbin Forrest)
• A story later titled Exit Alarmed won the Radio Cumbria Short Story Competition, Carlisle, 2004 (fiction.BHD)
• Ottackers Poetry Prize, Carlisle, 2004 (poetry.MS)

Workshops/Residencies

Brindley has run workshops for The National Trust, Carlisle Art College (now Cumbria University), and local writers groups (2006-2009).

Readers' Comments:

• On Martin in a Hole :‘I thought this was brilliant. Surreal and downbeat. (GarethCB on EditRed)
• On Doors : ‘Mm, excellent piece of work. It’s got a lovely dispossessed feel to it’ (Digs on EditRed)