Reviews
Bradley writes with great honesty and style … any new dad (and old dad) will immediately recognise themselves in these poems
Nursery News
Bump
Bump is a short collection of poems about the highs and
lows of pregnancy and babies from a Dad’s perspective. At the age of 38
Craig Bradley had no children. By the age of 40 he had two boys. This book
reflects the beautiful nightmare that is fatherhood.
Extracts from BUMP
WHAT IT IS
Believe me.
It’s got sod all to do with storks,
the mulberry bush or buns in the oven.
It’s not about being knocked up,
up the stick, up the duff,
the pudding club,
dropping a sprog,
being in the family way.
Let’s call it a miracle.
Everybody else does.
Or put it down to science if you like.
A simple chemical reaction
like wine, like rainbows, like love.
That’s what it is.
WARD
The shiny lino floor
accuses me as I walk in
-It’s your fault she’s in here, it says.
There’s a ghost in the telly
in the day room. Tatty mags,
drained cups, unthumbed books.
Unmade up mums, other people’s
nighties and new dads with Thank-
God-For-That faces.
The warm smell of school dinners
and swollen women glowing.
This place has more curtains than windows.
And you, perched on that prisonbunk
of a bed with plastic pillows
and hospital corners.
I watch the midwife breeze in,
breathe on her hands
and make bread with your belly.
STUFF
There is a fire engine
in the bathroom,
a train on the draining board
an elephant in my chair
and somewhere, in the middle
of all this, are you and me,
lost to the clutter and muddle of it.
This house belongs to somebody else now.
There are bottles of Cow and Gate
where my Guinness used to live,
a pram rammed behind the door
and sleepsuits hanging on the line
like so many surrenders.
The washing machine
is having a breakdown.
That second hand cot
smells of sleep and Tixylix.
The toybox shows off, full of itself.