Biography

Mike Smith

Recently received the degree of M Litt from Glasgow University and currently teaches Creative Writing at Cumbria University.

2009 A group of 5 poems including Ullswater Requiem and The Flickering wins the Sir Patrick Geddes Meorial Trust award, Edinburgh.
2009 The short play 'Smokes, a mime with words' performed at the Sydeny Short+Sweet Festival.
2008 Valanga published by Freerange Poetry, Carlisle
2008 The Flickering wins the Kirkpatrick Dobie Poetry prize, Dumfries.
2007 Martin Extinct, published by Freerange Poetry, Carlisle.
2007 Ullswater Requiem wins a Kirkpatrick Dobie poetry prize, Dumfries.

Published in Stand, Outposts, Cadenza, Acumen, Tears in The Fence & elsewhere.
Broadcast Radio 3, Radio Derby, Radio Cumbria.
2004 Writing as Brindley Hallam Dennis, won Radio Cumbria Short Story Competition.
2004 Won Ottaker’s Carlisle Poetry Competition.
1970s. Published The Broken Mirror (Outposts)
Love Affair With a Landscape (Curlew)
Appeared in New Poems 1976/77 (PEN)
2005 Published No Easy Place (poems)

Appeared in Night Balancing (Blinking Eye)/ Both Sides of Hadrian’s Wall (Selkirk Lapwing Press)
Member of Maryport Writers’ Group. Member of the EditRed writers’ online community. Reads regularly at Calrlisle’s Speakeasy, Penrith Blue Bell Bookshop. Co-organiser of Wordplay at NEO, Cockermouth. Co-founder of the Brewery Poets, Kendal ( a long time ago!)
Organised the Fringe Poetry event at Keswick: The Water Margin in 2007&8.

Samples

Mechanics (revised version)

He’s got that bloody poem stripped down again
The kitchen floor’s knee deep
In rough edged images
Discarded adjectives
A metaphor to fit
That won’t improve on it one little bit

He says it isn’t scanning sweet
And listens for a missing beat

It’s not as if he ever takes it out
But rides it in his dreams
Where he might leap the gulf
Between him and the world

He’s got that bloody poem stripped down again
And if he ever gets it running right, what then?



The Ways of Working

The sculptor will tell you how you can
If you wish to make a man
With some its what you take away
With others what you overlay
So start with wire
Or start with stone
I know a hundred ways to be alone

With wire you make an armature
To shape your man on true and sure
The stone you prize from out of earth
As much as makes a whole man’s worth
Wind the wire
Carve the stone
I know a thousand ways to be alone

Add the sinew mould the face
But of your fingers leave no trace
Gouge out a mouth chip out some eyes
Finely etch a skin of lies
Bury the wire
Polish the stone
There are a million ways to be alone

(The Ways of Working was featured in the film Words & Bronze, celebrating the life and work of sculptor Elizabeth Waugh)

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.