David Miles Thomas [Grant Dommen, Snappy Snaps]

FOR many years, David Miles Thomas served as the resident poet of Kentish Town, capturing the everyday details of the area in the books of verse he sold outside the Tube station.

David, who has died aged 56, was a kind-hearted and generous man with a good eye for detail and a boundless curiosity about the area in which he lived. He immortalised local tradesmen and passers-by in his poetry, and paid homage to the NHS, Camden Lock and Hampstead Heath, among many other subjects.

In one poem, “Camden”, he celebrates the “borough of a varied life/ A street, a market lock… I wonder to explain/ How gifted people can be.”

David was a familiar face to local business owners across Kentish Town, who were often willing to accept a poem as repayment for money he borrowed from them.

According to Grant Dommen, who runs Snappy Snaps in Kentish Town, David first came into his shop almost a decade ago.

“He got into writing loads of poems. Various subjects – usually local. He branched into geopolitics later on. There’s not many subjects he didn’t cover. He wrote them for friends, people he knew, people he owed money to,” he said.

Mr Dommen helped type up and print the verses penned in David’s “not always legible” handwriting, adding: “He used to call most days, and we’d get them all typed up, and we printed books… he used to wait outside the Tube station selling books and poems.”

David was a shrewd salesman, printing T-shirts emblazoned with lines of his verse.

“He’d sell anything – he put Disney to shame,” Mr Dommen said.

A resident of Leighton Road, David “was a good, kind-hearted man.

“He always said he was going to buy us a car when he got published. He was a character… he was a Kentish Town man, community minded. He had his issues, but he was a good man,” Mr Dommen said.

A former student of Hampstead School, David was born in Paddington, the middle child of three siblings. He grew up on Shoot-Up Hill between Kilburn and Cricklewood.

According to his older brother, Seán Thomas, the siblings were raised by their mother and grandmother. As a child he was popular. “Everyone knew David,” Mr Thomas said.

As an adult, David worked as a concierge before moving to Kentish Town, where he picked up poetry with “enthusiasm”, Mr Thomas said – although he could be less enthused by the prospect of scrubbing up.

““I spent years fighting [the landlord] for him to have a walk-in shower – and then he never used the bloody thing!”, Mr Thomas said.

He was happiest outside, talking to passers-by and writing about what he saw.

“He said he was an ‘Intergalactic Global Poet’,” Mr Thomas said. “I said: ‘How can you be an intergalactic global poet?’ He’d always come out with something. I’ll always remember his quotes.” David passed away last month following complications arising from a struggle with alcohol addiction.

“He was well-loved,” Mr Thomas said. “If you say anything, it has to be that he was well-loved.”