John Hegley

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Biography

Performance poet John Hegley was born in 1953 in Newington Green, Islington. He grew up in Luton and was educated at Bradford University, where he studied Literature and Sociology. He has worked as a bus conductor in Bristol, and in children's theatre in London.

His collections include Glad to Wear Glasses (1990), Can I Come Down Now Dad (1991) and Dog (2000). He has published a volume of verse for children, My Dog is a Carrot (2002). In 2008 he coedited an anthology of poetry for young people, The Ropes: Poems To Hold On To, with Sophie Hannah.

John Hegley has also released his own CD of songs and poetry, 'Saint and Blurry', and collaborated with Robyn Hitchcock as John Hegley and The Popticians.

In 2000 he received an honorary Arts Doctorate from Luton University.

Listen to the poems 'Fat Pat' and 'Octopus' by John Hegley 

Listen to 'Poemes de Terre'

Listen to 'I Need You'

Listen to 'Scottish'

Listen to 'Luton'

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Genres (in alphabetical order)

Poetry

Bibliography

Poems for Pleasure   Hamlyn, 1989

Glad To Wear Glasses   André Deutsch, 1990

Can I Come Down Now, Dad?   (with drawings by the author)   Methuen, 1991

Five Sugars Please   Methuen, 1993

These Were Your Father's   (with drawings by the author)   Methuen, 1994

Love Cuts   (with drawings by the author)   Methuen, 1995

The Family Pack   (Contents: 'The Brother-in-Law and Other Animals'; Can I Come Down Now, Dad?'; 'These Were Your Father's')   Methuen, 1996

Beyond Our Kennel   Methuen, 1998

Dog   Methuen, 2000

My Dog is a Carrot   Walker Books, 2002

The Sound of Paint Drying   Methuen, 2003

Uncut Confetti   Methuen, 2006

The Ropes: Poems To Hold On To   (editor with Sophie Hannah)   Diamond Twig, 2008

Read about books by John Hegley at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by John Hegley at Amazon.co.uk

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Critical Perspective

John Hegley has achieved the unlikely feat of being immensely popular with young people who like to think they're cool, whilst exploiting distinctly uncool material. He plays upon the pathos of the marginal - Luton, where he was born, looms large in his poems and it isn't just the actual Luton: the town stands for all places whose fault it isn't, which exist ergo must have people living in them, which simply are not cut out for the high life. As he puts it: 'I remember Luton / As I'm swallowing my crout'n'. This is subtitled: 'a poem about the town of my upbringing and the conflict between my working-class origins and the middle-class status conferred upon me by a university education'.

Hegley is the laureate of the lugubrious and bathos is his trademark: 'In Amsterdam / I saw a tram'. Readers who have only encountered him on the page are sometimes baffled by his appeal. The inconseqentiality is on such an epic scale and the bathos plumbs such depths that on the page at least it sometimes seems as if he's crossed the fine line between the bathetic and the utterly banal. But if Hegley had never written a book he would still be as famous. His audience is huge because everyone who has ever heard him is captivated by his mastery of timing and gesture and his complete domination of any audience that comes his way.

Hegley's is the comedy of dysfunction, of familial eccentricity, people consistently failing to rise to the occasion. Often his poems are based on a conceit that he worries the way his beloved dogs worry bones. 'Counterfeit love' is the love life of a money forger: his wife's leaving note running: 'you could say that I'll be forging my own way / but you probably won't'.

Hegley's mind is wired up for puns: a typical passage runs: 'it ma be taboo / to poo-poo the tatoo / but to me / the tattoo / is something to say ta-ta to'. Often the logic of the pun dictates the poem: logs and dogs have nothing in common save the rhyme, so the poem says so: '... it is not generally considered cruel / to abandon a log/ and dogs are rarely used as fuel'.

Like many performance poets, Hegley has agonized about the apparent gap between poets such as himself and the 'mainstream'. He has suffered some dismissive and condescending treatment. But most mainstream audiences command an audience a fraction of the size of Hegley's. He himself has said that what he writes is 'heavy light verse', not in the sense of heavy metal but of that tradition which uses light verse for a mordant purpose - Kit Wright would be a good example. To place him in a canonical context one might make comparisons with Stevie Smith: both share vulnerability and the use of extreme bathos; both are great English eccentrics. But he doesn't share Stevie Smith's religious/metaphysical strain, being very much a poet of the ordinary emotions and life as it is lived. He is also more buttoned up than Smith: 'Talking about my feelings ain't my cup of tea ... because revealing how I'm feeling isn't my Darjeeling'.   

Hegley is a brave defender of subjects universally considered risible: trainspotting, for example: 'The loco pulls in with its smoke-swilling lumber, / and I make a note of its infinite number / I'm very excited, my hand is unsteady / and then I remember I've got it already.' The poem 'Trainspotters' from Can I Come Down Now Dad?  (1991) is perhaps the strongest defence of this pastime:

'Is the happy shunter hunter
Any more insane
Than the lot who've not got jotters
Who spot the spotty spotters
With disdain?'

English folk music was once equally off the scale, before its very recent slight revival, but Hegley whilst admitting that 'There's those who'd have you keep / folk songs for the sheep', was once hooked by a ballad with 'lingering longing / in the wavering tones / over intricate patterns / of the fingering bones', since when 'many folk songs have moistened my eye, / and I can see why / the Morris dancer sports a spare hanky'. 

Commentators remark on the obsessive subjects that appear in his poems: he is, as one book puts it, Glad to Wear Glasses (1990). Making an affirmation of unregarded or unvalued things is his characteristic mode, so his glasses are 'a symbolic celebration / of the wider imperfection that is the human condition'. The corollary is that contact lenses are bad because 'they are a denial of the self, / they are a denial of the other, / they are a betrayal of humanity'. The glasses are a trademark, perhaps deriving from his first stage appearance:

'The first time I walked on stage
Someone called out 'hey
Look it's Buddy Holly!'
It's not what you'd expect in a nativity play.'

Dogs are another subject warranting most of a book (Dog, 2000) plus many other poems scattered through his oeuvre. The world of dogs of course is replete with the kind of clichés that Hegley likes:

'I was very keen,
But you didn't want me in your intestine,
I did myself up, like a doggie's dinner
I did myself up but I wasn't a winner.'

Sue Hubbard has said, in Poetry Review (Vol 84, 1994), 'he has made the world of dogs, glasses, men's facecloths and garden sheds supremely his own', which sounds like a backhanded compliment but it isn't the subject matter but the fact that he has made these things funny that counts.  

Peter Forbes, 2003 

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Further reading on this site

Cambridge Seminar
The Cambridge Seminar takes place every two years. It was last held over a week in mid-July 2009. The British Council's Cambridge Seminar on contemporary literature has influenced discussion, performance... more...   (30/06/2003)

Edinburgh Bookcase
The British Council Literature Department and British Council Scotland showcase contemporary writers at the Edinburgh International Book Festival every two years, in partnership with the Scottish Arts Council. The Bookcase... more...   (09/06/2004)

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Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Methuen Publishing Ltd 8 Artillery Row London  SW1P 1RZ England Tel: +44 (0)20 7802 0018 Fax: +44 (0)20 7828 1244 E-mail: info@methuen.co.uk http://www.methuen.co.uk

Agent United Agents 12-26 Lexington Street London  W1F 0LE England Tel: +44 (0)20 3214 0800 Fax: +44 (0)20 3214 0801 E-mail: info@unitedagents.co.uk http://www.unitedagents.co.uk

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Related links

http:/ / www.johnhegley.co.uk/

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