Talking Music, Art and Performing with British-Sri Lankan Writer Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila

Qissa: Most children write poetry, many teenagers/young adults dabble in school etc and then don’t really continue with it. When did you first consider yourself a poet?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: It's really funny because I don't think I've ever considered myself a poet to be honest. I always feel like a bit of an imposter when people have occasionally called me that. When I was 12, that's when I really picked it up as the way to make sense of things - not even really reading it, just writing it. Actually, as in most cases It was introduced to me through school so you get feedback from teachers and the feedback was quite good so it made me want to write more. That might have been a bit of a game changer actually. If the reception hadn't been so good, I don't think that would have lasted very long but as it was, I kept doing it and gradually accumulated that courage to broaden the circle to which I shared my writing. But when it comes down to it, I'd say, I'm more of a person who uses poetry to sort of capture and process these times in my life and reflect on them. But I also really appreciate the visuals as well. I like talking about beautiful things and ugly things and I think poetry is one of the best mediums to examine that because you can get to the emotional core of your reaction. And it's in a shorter form as well so you don't necessarily have to demonstrate your knowledge of the thing. It's very personal which I really, really like about it.

Qissa: Yeah, definitely. And it's quite and exploratory I guess. It doesn't need to be as concrete as an essay or maybe a novel would be.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah, it can be really abstract which is good. There's so much scope for exploration as, as you said, yeah.

Qissa:  Yeah, definitely. So, is there a word that you would describe yourself as? If you wouldn’t say poet, would you say artist? Or do you not like to define yourself by what you do?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Not really. I think I have so much interest in a lot of different forms of art. I think part of my fear of self-defining is that I don't want to make it something that consumes me. I find it very therapeutic and I don't want that sense of rest that comes from it to go away. So keeping it as something that I love doing - and who knows how these things will develop in the future - but, I think that's part of it is that I want to keep it something that I enjoy doing and not something that I feel like I have to do. Even though the dream is kind of to monetize your passions but, I think for now, maybe writer would be more fitting, or I might find that more comfortable just because there’s still scope for change in terms of form and length and so on.

Qissa: Yeah, absolutely. I guess there was a kind of peak of side hustle culture and ‘girl bossing’ and trying to monetize everything and then I think it's come back around where it is actually really good to have things on the side that you just do simply because you want to do them and not think about them kind of in that way

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah.

Qissa: even if eventually, you know, as you say they do [monetise it], which is always good.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah, because you want to be doing what you love the most at all times, really, but you don't want the peace you get from that to disappear.

Qissa: Definitely. So, for your own writing, do you prefer it in the spoken or written form?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Without a doubt for me written form. I think that goes for both creation and consumption. I think the spoken form is so important and responsible for how a lot of poetry is circulated. I think I use it as a very reflective process or I prefer it on the page and the same goes for reading it. I think the written form is so personal because you experience it by yourself and of course that isn't to say that performed poetry can't be personal, it very much is and you also get to share that impact with other people even if that's just you and the performer. But it's just a whole other level of vulnerability that I think I can only sort of take that in small doses. And there's something so special about reading what someone has written in another time, in another place, and happening upon it in a moment where those specific words mean so much to you and encapsulate so accurately how you feel, but that relationship is never acknowledged by the two people. It's kind of like an unsaid intimacy and I really like that about reading but specifically about poetry because, you know,  it's varying degrees of vulnerability.

Qissa: Amazing, yeah I completely agree with what you said about the written form and both of you experiencing the same thing and never meeting or never talking about that but both having been through that. I think for me, maybe just because I've never been a creative writer, with poetry I find I can absorb it a lot better when it's performed because people can put their own inflections and nuances into the speech that I could better understand if the poetry is slightly abstract. But I can certainly see why, as a performer, you would prefer it [in the written form].

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: I think what is so great about performed poetry is that the performer or the author very much gets to put across what they want to. I mean reception is another thing, but at least they're getting to deliver it in the truest form to how they intended it to be, which I guess is lost with written work because the audience is always projecting their own experience onto what you've written. Which I guess is, you know, the gain and loss in art is that once you put something out is it really yours anymore? Because people are always putting their own spin on it, and they're always seeing things in a lens that you wouldn't have seen because you don't have the same experiences as them. So, yeah, I think they're both really really important but just in terms of writing it, I like to write and keep it on the page and share it with people from the page, but I think, spoken word when it's done well, is really one of the most impactful things.

Qissa:  Yeah. Definitely. So can you tell us a little bit about Jaipur Literature Festival and how you came to perform there?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Okay, so I'm really, really fortunate to have parents who would just take me and my brother to anything, no matter how old we were. We had been in India for about six months and I remember our parents bundling us into the car in the really early morning so that we could drive for the first time to Jaipur Literature Festival to catch a talk by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and my brother and I used to love watching his program on the farm and stuff and he was doing a lot of work around sustainability and that was the topic of that specific discussion. And I really remember that and they just wanted us to have exposure to as many people talking about their own work as possible. So we went to the festival pretty much every year after that. 

Qissa: When was that first time? How old were you?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  I was nine and my brother was about six. So, yeah, almost 10 years ago now.

It's being exposed to writers and their craft exchange. It was great and because it's such an open experience I was really lucky to be able to talk to a lot of the authors which made me feel like writing was actually very accessible. And the people who wrote were also very accessible and you could have a discussion with them. And in the last year that I attended there was a new section set up called the Writer’s Shorts that would be sort of in between the main discussions. So, the Writer’s Shorts series was launched and you just submitted to that beforehand about six months before the actual festival and then you would be broadcast online and on the ground. Two of my poems were selected and from that I was invited to read some more at the British Library for JLF London. So yeah, I mean it's kind of how a lot of writers get their work shared. You just have to submit as much of your work is allowed and then you try and make yourself stand out a bit more. I remember, for one of mine they were saying you should have a background that really reflects your work. I remember agonising over trying to fit this torch through like a toilet roll to get a spotlight on the wall and then I had stuck all these tiny stars on the wall.

Qissa: I've seen it - it looks great!

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Yeah, I just remember trying to get it centred and oh, but, I mean it paid off because it was selected and that was really a big step for me to release that, first of all, as a spoken word thing because it was only ever on the page before and then second of all to a sphere where it's all about literature. It's not that you're doing something that's kind of different from everybody else. You have to try and make yourself different but at the same time you don't want to be different for different’s sake. You want to stay true to yourself and finding that balance was… not difficult… but it took some thought. Yeah.

Qissa: Yeah, absolutely. So, Jaipur Literature festival was all pre-recorded and then the JLF London event was in person, is that right?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah, exactly. And then when I was in Jaipur, I did do another in person reading for the UK mission to India and that was live but it wasn't really in front of a huge audience.

Qissa: Okay. Was that one and the JLF London one your first experiences of performing?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Yeah, they were absolutely. I mean I think I had to read some stuff out in school but the difference is huge because up until Jaipur I hadn't ever really shared my poems and people who didn't know me well. So, to put out those pieces for people who didn't know me and didn't know the context of the poems was quite surreal because on one hand it's really daunting to think that the first time people who you speak to or just people come to know that you exist, it's this very personal examination but on the other hand, in a weird way, I feel that the privacy is sort of maintained because there's still a level of anonymity there. So you get this brief glimpse into someone and then you don't ever interact with them again and that's the only thing that lingers and I think I actually prefer that just as a mode of self preservation. When someone already knows you then gains that extra glimpse and then they’re still quite permanently in your life after peering into this private corner of your mind. Sometimes you're left with that feeling that you would get when you've overshared or something.

“to put out those pieces for people who didn't know me and didn't know the context of the poems was quite surreal”

Qissa:  Yeah.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Of course, I say that as well as a person who prefers the written form. To me, it's more of a solitary act. So I think the privacy on some level is important to me. So actually, it was great performing it at both editions of Jaipur because you get to share your work, and you get to share your work with people who love poetry and love literature. That can't always be said for the people that you're confiding in and who know you - that's more like you're sharing yourself. You're sharing another aspect of yourself whereas you are really sharing your work and your work contains aspects of yourself and your thoughts when you're releasing it into a space such as Jaipur. So, yeah, it was unlike anything I'd really done before in terms of poetry. I'm so grateful for that experience. It really did a lot for my confidence in myself and confidence in my work.

Qissa:  Amazing. It sounds so great. I would really love to go to Jaipur for the festival.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  It's really amazing. And again as I said because it's such an open experience, you just can see as many people as possible and you get to see writers watching other writers, writers being just audience members and I love that about it.

Qissa:  Yeah. So, do you think you would feel more exposed if we were having, for example, this interview on a stage in front of an audience or if you were in a panel discussion, as opposed to reading your poetry, or do you think they would kind of be equal?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Would I feel more comfortable doing that?

Qissa: Yes. Or more vulnerable?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Oh I think I would feel fine doing that because that's discussion of craft and I do love discussing work with other people and I love to know what other people's processes are. But then you have to get down to actually sharing something, it's, you know, it's something that you've made and it's something that often you're feeling. And because it's working through your own perspective - I think there's something about poetry that is so much more private than a novel. Usually, with a novel, you're maybe sprinkling aspects of yourself in the different characters but you are trying to develop these people that are not you. Which is a really difficult thing to do, to not put so much of yourself into a character, but with poetry there's not that much to hide behind. And when you, when you're talking about what you do and what you like and what your influences are, you are talking about yourself but it's just not as precious, you know.

“I think there's something about poetry that is so much more private than a novel”

Qissa: Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. In terms of your writing and your influences, what would you say does influence you the most? Is it your own experiences? Are you influenced by hearing from or reading other poets? Music?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Funnily enough, I don't think that other people's work is that consistent of an influence. Obviously sometimes you read something and you really want to sort of create a pastiche of it or something. I think, what really nudges me to write is music, personal experience and then I suppose visual components, which would be like visual art or the natural world.

The urge to write starts from personal experience and to work through whatever feeling I’m getting or whatever remnants there are of something that's really impacted me. I feel like what's coming through is that writing the poems is more like a productive coping mechanism for me. I've always been one to really dissect my feelings and reactions to things so poems are a way to sort of ease out and loosen that knot that I sometimes get. And I suppose with music comes the same dangers as reading. If you think of it as an influence there's that fear that you subconsciously copy instead of borrow. Borrowing is a good thing, it’s as authentic as anyone is in any form of art. They've all borrowed elements in it with varying degrees of obviousness. But for me, especially when I'm experiencing a bit of a writing slump, music is great for rhythm, it's great for structure, it's really good for seeing how the shape of a word comes through in someone's mouth. And in my opinion, music can elicit a more powerful emotional reaction than any other form of art. Like poetry, it's incredibly personal, so it's very helpful if you're trying to zero in on a feeling. But I find it's also a great tool for measuring life. So if you're in need of transportation, through certain music, you can live in that time or in that feeling again. So you can put yourself in that headspace to sort of re-experience the sensory elements as well as the visual elements and your internal reactions to that. So, yeah, music is a really important device for me. Then visually I'm really influenced by colours and the way that corresponds to how people feel and also by the seasons actually. And I think seasons are quite bread and butter poetry wise, but they're such a good backdrop in my opinion. It just helps instil a time even more and the seasons all have their own sort of personifications that you can play around with. But the visuals are always what I like to wrap the concept around to make the poem more tangible. Art galleries are perfect for that because you can just get all these little things to funnel into your work and the fact that they aren't typically words - it's all represented in an image - and then you get to pull out how you want to describe that. And that's a nice little way of borrowing from that.

“If you're in need of transportation, through certain music, you can live in that time or in that feeling again.”

Qissa: It's interesting what you were saying about music taking you back and putting you into different places. I was talking to someone about this the other day. I wonder if the generation that's growing up now - because we have access to so much music, you can listen to anything at any time and when I was young and I'd go on a roadtrip with my parents, it would be the same albums playing again and again and again. So whenever I hear that song I'm immediately back in that car or in that place and I wonder whether the next generation are not going to have that same connection because they probably aren’t listening to the same songs every time because they have so much more choice.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Yeah. That's the wonderful and also kind of sad thing about how accessible artist catalogues are today. I was saying that to my parents recently as well actually. It's almost as if the music of a time isn't really what dictates the time so much anymore. Of course it still plays a huge part in dictating what the culture is but I think because music taste is so individualised now because you have access to everything that came before your time even. So, for me, almost everything that I listen to now is things that my parents were listening to when they were my age. For me, it's maybe not broken down to albums as much as it used to be. Obviously, in my childhood, it really was because there were albums that my parents would play all the time. Like when I was really small in London or when we would go on road trips like you said so that element is there but now I can listen to a song, maybe that I was listening to obsessively two summers ago, and instantly I'm transported back to that time. So I think that power is still there but it's on a different level now where it's specifically songs or artists and maybe not the feeling of a whole album because that's also been sort of dismantled with how people consume - they don't really buy music anymore either, so you're not buying something and then you spent money on it so you you try and really get into it, you have to listen to it. It's very much that the consumer is king.

Qissa: What kind of music do you like to listen to? Are there any particular artists?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  I like a lot of stuff. I think I go through phases. Recently, I have been listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac.

Qissa:  Excellent. Excellent choice.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  My brother and I, like religiously, listen to King Krule. We're gonna see him later in the year, which is very exciting and I've been getting into Bob Dylan recently. Jeff Buckley, Mazzy Star, always. And I'm always listening to all of Hope Sandoval's projects. Yeah, lots of different things.

Qissa: That's a good range. 

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah.

Qissa: I think I'm the same. I do listen to a lot of the stuff that I listened to with my parents.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah, it's funny how that cycle happens. I would listen to my parents’ music and then around 13 or something it was completely Charts and whatever was being released every week. And then it's nice that you kind of then develop what you do actually like. But I think that that stage of being so invested in what's happening then and what is the zeitgeist and the mainstream, I think that's so crucial to teenage development. I think everybody needs to go through that stage.

Qissa:  Yeah, definitely. It's such a bonding mechanism as well with your friends and your peers.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Exactly. It's so part of the teenage experience, I think. And I'm glad I did have that, but I'm also glad that I've completely woven my dad's and my mom's music taste into mine now.

Qissa: So what are your future plans, both in terms of your writing, your poetry, and just generally in life?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  Yeah, so my gap year is coming to an end and I'll be off to university in September. I'm going to study comparative literatures and cultures, which is examining literature from all across the globe, which is good because it kind of speaks to my upbringing a bit. I was born in England and I love literature in the English language but then we moved to Brazil and I really had a fascination with a lot of South American authors and how they really were pioneers of magical realism. And then India obviously has a very rich literary culture. So I felt that actually it was very important to me to be able to study literature from everywhere, instead of just having a narrower focus on the English language.

I also really wanted to spend time on the other aspects that I'm interested in and this degree examines that literature, but it also spends a lot of time on philosophy, history, film visual art, that may have influenced the work. So very excited for that. Hopefully, I'll keep writing and putting bodies of work together. You kind of just have to persist with sending things to literary reviews, literary magazines and I suppose in university as well, there's going to be a fair few people doing the same thing, so it might not be so much of a solo endeavour as it has been which will be nice and it'll push me out of my comfort zone and teach me new things. To be honest, I'm just eager to see the shape that this next chapter of my life takes. So much is going to be new. So you kind of just have to learn how to deal with that as it comes.

Qissa: Absolutely. Well from the very brief interactions that we've had, I feel like you’ll fare very well.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Thank you.

Qissa: So, do you think creative words can be more powerful politically than academic words?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila:  I think they definitely can. It really comes down to both length and what's more accessible. I think academic words, they usually underpin politics or act as like an anchor to political movements. But what more people remember and what people learn about even when they didn't experience that political climate or time is the songs, the speeches, the slogans, the poems birthed from those movements and I'm sure that has to do with collective emotion and experiencing that all together. That's what gets people mobilised and that's what unites people. And politics impacts everybody but unfortunately, academic words are not accessible to everybody, both physically and intellectually. So, you need something that can be circulated easily that elicits that emotional response, and that makes people care. I think that's the power that creative words do have over academic words.

Qissa: Are there any particular poets and poems that have inspired you? I know you said that that's not the main source of your inspiration, but is there anyone that you just admire generally, even if they haven't really influenced your work?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: There are a lot that are really important to me, in that same way that you find something at a time when you really need it. I’d say David Berman’s ‘Imagining Defeat’ is very important to me. He was also the lead singer of Silver Jews and then Purple Mountains and I think it’s so impressive to do poetry so well and to do music so well. Though people think that they’re very entwined, and they are, but to be able to separately do those really well is so impressive. And Frank O’Hara’s ‘For Grace After a Party’. I really love Frank O’Hara. He has a lot of range in terms of the length of his stuff. These two poems are both fairly short though it’s not just sprawling imagery and filler metaphors to flesh the poem out. Everything seems so carefully chosen so as to acutely explore a specific moment or feeling. And while both of these poems call out something larger - basically what any form of art calls out to - it’s death and it’s love - it’s framed in this very quiet intimacy. Like you’ve accidentally just opened a door to a secret room or picked up a note on a fridge that you’re not the intended audience for. But it’s given you this sense of connection anyway. And I love that. It’s like seeing an interaction and seeing yourself in that interaction and seeing your life and yet it’s completely separate from you. And the poetry that I find really inspiring and effective is work that builds intimacy but still releases that thing that’s so personal. In some ways it’s nice to feel seen by a piece of work and in other ways it’s nice to know that people can feel so intensely about something or someone and that they can depict the mundane in such a beautiful light. I think there’s something to be said about knowing how to craft something, and funnelling so much feeling and imagery but still keeping it simple so that it’s not overwhelming to the reader. Everything is in its right place. Everything has been so carefully chosen to convey at least what you’re pulling from it or what the author wants to say. I also think Vievee Francis’ ‘I’ve Been Thinking About Love Again’ - that’s really beautiful and effective. I think effective is the most important thing for poetry if you’re writing it for other people to read. I don’t want to say clever because I don’t think that poetry has to be a demonstration of intelligence necessarily, but I think when things are well-crafted it makes it so enjoyable. It’s like ‘thank God people know how to make this and we are so lucky to be able to read or consume things that have so much thought and emotion put into them’. 

“In some ways it’s nice to feel seen by a piece of work and in other ways it’s nice to know that people can feel so intensely about something or someone and that they can depict the mundane in such a beautiful light.”

Qissa: Yes. There’s such a fine line. I mean I enjoy works on both sides but stuff that's so finely crafted that you're not thinking about the craft of it at all.

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: Yes, exactly! That’s exactly what I mean. You know you’re not dissecting it as you would in school. You’re not trying to annotate it and look for hidden meanings. Metaphors are used in a way that completely makes sense and imagery is used in a way that completely makes sense and you don’t have to think about but at the same time when you really look into the process that person went through to arrive at those choices, it’s so impressive. This goes for any form of art but I think many people are so selective with poetry and I really get that because I think it’s easy to not do it well. It depends on what your version of good is. But when you find something really good it’s so special, you almost want to keep it for yourself because of how personal it is and how much it means to you. Sometimes it’s hard to describe that to other people. 

Qissa: 100%. Thinking about inspiration in general - who is an inspiration to you?

Anoushka Bradley-Gammanpila: There are obviously people in my life that impact me in small ways and big ways. Sometimes in ways that are almost hard to describe or say to them. You know sometimes you almost can't say to someone how much they've inspired you. I think I'd say it's obvious that I'm inspired by a lot of artists because of the way that they're able to use all these different mediums to depict the way that they see the world and the way that they juggle all these different ideas and things. I think polymaths are incredible as someone who can't imagine doing one thing forever, it’s really inspiring to see people doing lots of things well. If I were to think about someone who's consistently inspired me - for about three years now I've had this very intense fascination with Jeff Buckley for a number of reasons. His choices lyrically and melodically obviously have a multitude of influences and yet, he's so distinctive. Which I think must be the dream as an artist. You know, artists, especially musicians, are consuming all the time. So, it's impossible to not, occasionally, reshape something that you love, but then to simultaneously be so singular and to become a primary source of inspiration for so many other musicians that have followed, that's a really impressive feat. There was that period of time after ‘Grace’ was released when he was recording with Tom Verlaine of Television. I think Verlaine was producing and Verlaine said something along the lines of the guy was much better without the band which actually makes sense because what draws you to Buckley is the vocals and the earnestness and you wouldn't want anything to take away from that intentionally or unintentionally. But I think to have that presence and that style and it's just you, I think that's incredible to have that individuality and for people to accept that, and to love that. That's very inspiring to me and I also love what he says about having grace as a quality. It kind of changed the way that I wanted to move through life. He goes on a whole spiel about grace in this one interview but he says it keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly. And that's not to say that you must completely suppress any feelings of rage or hurt. But rather, I think it speaks to growth and acceptance and keeping a level head and knowing yourself. And it's so difficult to embody grace. But to have that as a value or actually to have grace running through the outline of the person that you want to step into. I really respect that. It's a mode of self-improvement that doesn't have to be selfish.

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Thank you so much to Anoushka for speaking with us!