This is the blogsite of Brindley Hallam Dennis & Mike Smith. We’ve been inseparable for years. We have been writing for a long time. BHD writes fiction. You can read and hear some of it on the links. I write poems, plays and other bits and pieces. There are links to his writing and to mine, and there’s Kowalski too.
Between us BHD and Me have racked up a dozen or so prizes and awards for our writing (I’m trying to stop calling it ‘work’, which is a habit I picked up from people who want us to think of it that way, people who think that it elevates it, and us, and I suppose them, in some way, compared to the alternative, play).
2013 Talked Out is Highly Commended in the Inktears annual short story competition prize
2013 A Funeral is Highly Commended in the SLQ December 2012 Short story competition
2012 Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition: Stump wins 3rd prize
2012 Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition: Sand wins 3rd prize
2012 Earlyworks Press Sci-Fi Competition 2nd prize withThe Cover Story
2011 HISSAC short story competition Highly Commends The Turkey Cock
2011 Weyland’s Maps takes 2nd Prize Didsbury Arts Festival Short Story competition (& In Tribal Lands is commended)
2011 The Mackwater Seam gets Highly Commended in the Sentinel Quarterly fiction competition. (this may have been a forerunner of Kowalski’s voice)
2010 Don’t Tell Me The Story runner up in Spilling Ink Review micro-fiction competition.
2010 A Single Word, 2nd prize, Muriel Carmichel Prose (non fiction) competition, Dumfries Campus, Glasgow University.
2009 Martin in a Hole, 2nd prize in the Grist short story competition.
2009 Talking to Maurice, 2nd prize in the Bank Street Writers short story competition.
2009 a group of 5 poems, including Ullswater Requiem and The Flickering received a Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust award.
2008 The Flickering received the Kirkpatrick Dobie poetry award.
2007 Ullswater Requiem received a Kirkpatrick Dobie poetry award.
2006 The Ballad of Matty Lonnin won the Cumbria Life magazine short story competition.
2005 Exit Alarmed won the BBC Radio Cumbria short story competition.
2004 So Still won the Ottakers, Carlisle, open poetry competition.
In 2008 BHD and Me were granted the Degree of M Litt by Glasgow University, but it’s only my name on the parchment! I am currently teaching as a part time member of the Cumbria University Creative Writing team, in addition to running fiction workshops.
Publications:
Talking to Owls (short stories) – (BHD) Pewter Rose, 2012
A Penny Spitfire (novella) – (BHD) Pewter Rose, 2011
That’s What Ya Get – Kowalski’s Assertions - (BHD) Unbound Press, 2010
Valanga – (poems in experimental form, MS) -Freerange Press, 2007 (50 copies)
Second Time Around – (Short Stories, BHD) – Chelifer, 2006 (100 copies)
Martin? Extinct? - (poems, selections from, MS) Freerange, 2005 (50 copies)
No Easy Place – (poems,MS) Chelifer, 2005 (100 copies)
The Broken Mirror (poems, MS) Outposts, 1976. (168 copies)
Love Affair With A Landscape (poems, MS) Curlew Press -c1976 (c50 copies)
Bhdandme have appeared in Stand, Outposts, Acumen, The New Writer, Early Works Press, Sentinel Champions, Markings, Current Affairs, Cumbria Life, Grist, Pinhole Camera, Beautiful Scruffiness, Ipse, Orbis, Lancashire Evening Post, Urbane Gorilla, Night Balancing, Pick, Cadenza, Tears in the Fence, Muse, Southlight, Windfalls, Tattoo Highway, EditRed, The Journal, Cumbria Magazine, Grope, Strath, Promontory, Omens, PEN New Poetry 1976/7, Radio Three, Radio Cumbria, Theatre By The Lake The Thresholds International Postgraduate Short Story Forum & elsewhere, and have several short plays published by Lazy Bee Scripts. BHD’s short stories have been frequently performed by the London based Liars League, and by their colleagues at Liars League Leeds, and Liars League New York City.
.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 12, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Kevan Ogden
Just finished reading PENNY SPITFIRE. Bought it off you sometime ago in Kendal but started reading LIFE AND FATE first. (Long book!)
Style Joycean – with thought and speech interchangeable. Reminds me a little too of Grassic Gibbon’s SCOTS QUAIR – in the way a kind of community voice is created – speech eliding into thought and then moving between characters.
Impressed by the detail – researched or remembered? Both probably. I particularly liked the anecdote about attempting to feed the Hindus with beef. And the last chapter was a beaut. Also liked the chapter with Charles planning a brave new world (David Hare’s PLENTY slipped into my head).
I think though you’re slightly hindered by the problem I have – that words are there to be savoured and are not mere mechanical units for shunting a story along. You find the words that sound best, link them and create a picture – shape epiphanies. You won’t get into the supermarkets that way! (You might make BOOTHS!)
I had a chat with you at the Brewery in Kendal and slipped you a card with my website. Wondered if you’d checked my novel out? It’s at http://www.freenovels.co.uk. A brief comment on the first chapter would be nice- though I’d also appreciate any ideas you might have for publicising it – eg are there other places where I might be able to do readings. (Don’t look for me in supermarkets either – unless life on the pension proves a struggle and I end up stacking shelves).
Kevan Ogden
November 13, 2011 at 5:54 pm
bhdandme
Thanks for the comment. Curiously I’m reading Life & Fate too… a second go. I r4ead it a couple of years ago, and decided to repeat rather than listen to the adaptation. Also, read Sunset Song in the summer, the first in LGG’s trilogy. I read your first chapter too, and enjoyed it! I mean to get a copy onto my E-reader. When I tried to leave a comment it didn’t work. Probabvly my inability with technology! Keep in touch! BHD