Something about myself

I am a poet and writer living in Knebworth, Hertfordshire, not too far from the great steaming metropolis of London.

I have been writing on and off since I was a little boy under the spell of Lewis Carroll. Later on, my chief influences came to be Philip Larkin and some of the East German poets I studied - and met - while I was writing my PhD, especially Heinz Czechowski and Wulf Kirsten with their observant eye and melancholic tone.

In the Nineties I started to invent languages (rather like JRR Tolkien) and created the ancient civilisation of Ulbia in the Rhine region.

This enthusiasm culminated in my book The Voice of Heaven: Ulbic Stories of Wise Men and Heroes, published in 2005. This volume includes Menpule the Teacher, a prose account of a hot-headed prophet, preaching against the iniquities of his times, and The Holy Rain, a long poem about the epic trek of the ancestral Ulbs across Central Europe.

Since joining the Poetry ID group in Letchworth, my poems have been drawn more from real life. I have had poems published in magazines including poetrymonthly.com/ Poetry Monthly International and The Heron's Nest (haiku). Some of my translations from the German have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation and The Wolf. Poems of mine were longlisted for the Ver Prize 2009 and the Magma Poetry Competition 2011.

Most recently, I have had five poems published in the pamphlet After Orwell (Poetry ID, 2011), a celebration of George Orwell's life and work brought out for the first George Orwell Festival in Letchworth, September 2011 (ISBN 978-1-4478-2617-0).

Further selections of my work can be read on http://poetry-id.wetpaint.com/ and www.poetrypf.co.uk/dennistomlinsonpage.shtml

My Links page shows a few websites that have proved useful to me.

I would also like to thank my friend Dusti Rodes, who has contributed a lot to this website and helped to expand it.