Meaghan Flokstra

David Bradford, Dream of No One but Myself.

Kingston: Brick Books, 2021. $22.95.

David Bradford’s debut full-length poetry collection Dream of No One But Myself is a captivating hybrid of lyric, prose, self-erasure, and altered photographs. An exploration of themes such as grief, race, family, and identity, this book is a strikingly innovative combination of vulnerability and destruction.
This collection’s narrative reveals fragments of a journey in dealing with the distance and loss of father, as well as the way this pain permeates and shapes every relationship within the family dynamic. Lyric and prose complement each other to provide snapshots of a full life story, the decay and regrowth of a household. In “The Shower,” Bradford writes of the bonds of family holding these shards together:

The death of a parent, especially a last-remaining parent, is where siblings come in handy, I think: in at least knowing that, somewhere out there, in the alabaster country of an Eastern Township or the yesteryear plantations of Pennsylvania, there is another person, who may understand very little about you, piecing together some of the grief.

The boundaries of one’s family are in constant flux, leaving behind scars and plugged holes that still leak. Pain is reflected in the transformation of the poems. Certain words are greyed or crossed out, and others are completely illegible. The scars of trauma are tangible in the mutilations and alterations of the poems on a visual level.
The fluidity of the book’s form also speaks to the precariousness of the human mind. Here, memory is portrayed not only as fallible, but also as malleable, prone to rearrangement and recolouring over time. It is autobiographical in perhaps the most authentic way, exposing the vulnerable cracks of what has faded or been forgotten over the years. I found myself particularly drawn to the poems which had been self-erased, whited-out, mangled, and/or scribbled over. I held the pages up to the light, squinting to catch words which were barely there, desperate to know whether a line says “hand of peace” or “bond of peace” or maybe something else altogether. I was not always successful. Fragments of the poems slip away, and it’s as frustrating as noticing that one of my own recollections is starting to feel fuzzy at the edges. The core is still there, but you can’t help but mourn the loss of the bits that aren’t.
Bradford’s family photos ground the collection. Scattered throughout the book, they receive the same transformative treatment as the poems and have been torn, twisted, and folded up. These photos complement the poems, providing concrete insight into the real people and stories at the heart of the narrative. Pictures are perhaps more trustworthy than memories, so I enjoyed that these too were difficult to piece together. Reconstructing them takes effort, a commitment to seeing and processing them in their entirety.
Both literally and figuratively colourful, Dream of No One but Myself embraces the mutability of memory in revealing a difficult journey. Reading this book felt like sifting through a souvenir box overflowing with polaroids, newspaper clippings, and ticket stubs—a glimpse into a lifetime not my own.

MEAGHAN FLOKSTRA

is the Editorial Intern for The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing. A multidisciplinary artist raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Meaghan currently studies Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College in Mississauga.