I took myself off to the hallowed galleries and rooms of the old Deptford Town Hall, now part of Goldsmiths University, to meet with Neil Bradley and talk about his latest book, Kitchen Sink Dharma, which is vastly different from his last book, Four Funerals and a Wedding, that told the story of his family and growing up in and around the Old Kent Road. This is a book of poetry, writes Michael Holland.
The book begins with COVID-19, literally and metaphorically. It is the title of the poem and actually the first one Neil wrote, ‘in anger’, he says, ‘during the week leading up to the first lockdown’.
Five years on, that single poem became many poems, along with unfinished plays, novels and songs that filled up more and more space at home.
Neil’s father died in recent months and pushed a button, ‘I was determined to get to grips with all my outstanding writing projects, if only to free up space on my computer, as well as typing up the reams of writing I’d accumulated in notebooks over the years.’
In that self-proclaimed mission he found ‘hundreds of thousands of words which have never seen the light of day, many of which I can’t even remember writing!’
All those words, all those ‘works-in-progress’ will now be finished and published as Neil finds himself in ‘a rich seam of writing form’. A follow-up memoir and a novel, ‘My Dead Girlfriend’, which he has been working on for the last five or six years, should all be ready for publication in the next few months.
‘All in all,’ says the writer, ‘it’s been an exhausting, yet rewarding, few months for me, which I thank my dad for inspiring. He was always really interested in my writing, even if he often couldn’t make head nor tail of any of the stuff I wrote!’
I wondered if there was a theme to the poems. ‘There’s no real theme as such. Naturally, with my first poem coming on the eve of Lockdown, the pandemic influenced a lot of my early poems but I eventually broke away from that and simply started writing about the things that were happening to me there and then; the things I was observing on public transport or whilst sitting drinking coffee in a café…
‘The most important thing for me was that my poetry should be accessible, especially for those who have either no real experience of reading poetry or, very much like me, who come from a background where poetry was definitely not for the likes of them.’
I began reading my copy on the way home on public transport and found it very accessible, very readable. I wanted to read one out to the people in the train carriage, give my own open mic performance on the train. This one especially resonated:
Conspiracy Merchant
I think it’s all a conspiracy
My friend said
Even though for weeks
At the start
He was sick in bed
And his mother died from it
The virus, the covid
You’ll be telling me next
That a man didn’t land
On the moon, I said
Even though my dad made me watch it
Got me up out of bed.
The last poem in the book is a tribute to his dad, and brings the poetry part to its conclusion; after that is a selection of songs(Neil taught himself to play the piano during lockdown, which led on to the songwriting).
‘Most of the poems are very me,’ reveals Neil. ‘They’re all very flippant, or matter-of-fact, and are very much based on my somewhat “out-of-kilter” view of the world. Others, I think, are really poignant’
I asked if poetry was a big shift away from writing a regular column in one of the nation’s earliest fanzines – The Lion Roars – The Millwall mag that once had a readership of thousands before it faded out when up against podcasts and too many copycat publications. He answered simply, ‘Not that much different, to be honest.’
And that seemed to be a good place to finish talking to a man who has created an alter-ego (Brad) where he can be a poet, a painter, a playwright, a novelist and a blogger without hiding behind it.
Kitchen Sink Dharma (Poetry and Songs), along with his memoir, Four Funerals and a Wedding (Journeys in Creative and Life Writing), is available from Amazon.co.uk priced £10.00.
You can also view the work of Brad the Artist at The Long Pond, 110 Westmount Road, Eltham, London SE9 1UT and at the Capital Art Gallery, 13 Well Hall Parade, Eltham, London SE9 6SP
Neil’s podcast, The Likes of Us (dedicated to Working-Class Life, Art, Politics and Culture), is available via Apple podcasts and all other podcast outlets.
