Brindley Hallam Dennis

also known as Mike Smith

I’ve written poetry for more than forty years as Mike Smith. Influences include Rudyard Kipling, John Berryman,and Robert Frost, Norman Nicholson, Geoffrey Holloway, and Josephine Dickinson.
Since 1998 I have written fiction using my pre-adoption name of Brindley Hallam Dennis. Influences include 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 as BHD

• 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).

Poetry as Mike Smith

• Valanga (Freerange Press, 2008)
• Martin?Extinct? (Freerange Press, 2007)
• No Easy Place (Chelifer, 2004)
• Love Affair With a Landscape (Curlew, c1976)
• The Broken Mirror (Outposts, c1976)
• (Poems have appeared in around 40 magazines including: Stand, Acumen, Cadenza, Outposts, The Journal, & Tears in The Fence; and in several anthologies, including the PEN New Poetry, 1976/7, Windfall (Dumfries, 2007), Both Sides of Hadrian’s Wall (Selkirk, 2006), Night Balancing (Blinking Eye, 2006) & Christmas New Writing (Cumbria, 2005).
• Sections from the poem Ullswater Requiem are on the Third Way website

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 2007 & 2008, reading as Mike Smith with Matthew Sweeney, and as BHD 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 poem The Flickering won The Kirkpatrick Dobie Poetry Award, Dumfries, 2008 (poetry.MS)
• The poem sequence Ullswater Requiem won a Kirkpatrick Dobie Poetry Award, Dumfries, 2007 (poetry.MS)
• 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 A Falling Frost at Bank House Garden by Mike Smith
  ‘You’ve done it again. I love this.’ (niceandy on EditRed)
• On Martin in a Hole by Brindley Hallam Dennis
  ‘I thought this was brilliant. Surreal and downbeat. (GarethCB on EditRed)
• On No Easy Place, poems by Mike Smith
  This is an unforgettable voice (Angela Locke, author of Dreams of the Blue Poppy)
• On Doors by Brindley Hallam Dennis
  ‘Mm, excellent piece of work. It’s got a lovely dispossessed feel to it’ (Digs on EditRed)