John Hegley

In keeping with my attempts to write about a range of subjects and mediums, this post is about the poet, comedian and musician John Hegley.

I'm not his biographer, if you want to find out about the early years of his life in a bungalow in Luton you'll need to go elsewhere. All I'm really interested in today is the man and his words.

I've seen it said that John Hegley is too funny to ever really be taken seriously as a poet, but at the same time too talented a poet to be considered a comedian -- he exists in several worlds all at the same, without seeming to want to settle for just one.

John Hegley's poems were first introduced to me by the infamous Kath -- who is more or less responsible for my whole poetry liking, along with getting me to listen to Radiohead, wear eyeliner and love Manchester. She has a lot to answer for besides this, too, but it's all been said before and this isn't a post about girls.

When Kath first sent me John Hegley I think she told me that they were amusing, but that the poems also had a sort of deeper meaning to them. She didn't mean deeper as in spiritual or philosophical, but literally there was more than just what you saw on the surface -- like so many, Hegley sometimes uses humour to approach a serious subject. If you can cover yourself with humour sometimes you can sneak up on thinking about a more serious point without realising until it's too late.

Lost Going To Shropshire was hardly a poem with a serious message -- but it wasn't just to be thrown away, either. Hegley says himself in the poem that he likes ambiguity, and clearly he is very bright since he likes to play with words. Take for example his short poem, The Play

Yesterday i went to see a play in my friend’s car
It was by an experimental group
Who do plays in people’s cars

It makes you smile, but you realise it's a subtle joke about the use of grammar. In his poem Mad Mum Hegley slowly reveals small pieces of information about a scene -- a scene which starts simply with someone pushing a pram and saying "my little baby", but before too long you find out it's neither a woman, nor really a baby. And although it's funny, you also realise there's a point in there about mental health. Perhaps unlike his poem/diary entry which reads "In the doctor's reception the sign read: 'Are you looking after someone over 65 with mental health problems?'. I read the sign as 'Are you looking for someone over 65 with mental health problems?'.

There are several immediately identifiable themes I can pick out running through John Hegley's work. I think the clearest of these would be dogs. There's Death of a Dog -- not surprisingly about the death of his dog, but in many ways a typical Hegley poem in that it's both funny and serious and sad and it makes you think. When distraught about the death of his dog, the young protagonist remembers something he'd read that posed the idea that if you lived forever there would be no point in trying to do anything -- because you'd be able to do everything an infinite number of times. There's too many poems for me to try and remember about his dogs specifically -- but dogs also crop up in some unusual places in his poems.

Apparently a committed Christian, Hegley also has poems about Jesus. Normally, the mention of Jesus makes me a little twitchy but he usually manages to refrain from being preachy. In Look Dad, Hegley writes about Jesus' joy of walking on water ("walking on water is God's gift to me") -- in a very funny and likeable way. He lapses briefly into French (as he sometimes does, as a nod to his own French Dad), but also throws in a reference to dogs. In Jesus Isn't Just For Christmas Hegley asks if Jesus had a dog, with the strange line of questioning:

Did he have a dog? And was it disaster?
Breaking all its legs and going round in plaster,
Swallowed by the water, following its master,
Sinking like a stone, only sinking somewhat faster."

It makes sense knowing John Hegley that he would wonder if Jesus had a dog -- but the rest of is just so far off the wall. But it works.

It's a relatively serious poem -- but Hegley injects his own humour into it. The poem ends with the lines "No trial, for whatever it is the lad done -- if that's a Good Friday, I wouldn't want a bad one". It makes me laugh, but when you stop laughing you do stop to think for a minute.

Another theme that crops up with some regularity in Hegley's work is that of family. He has songs about growing up in his Luton bungalow with his siblings, about his Mum living in a mobile home, poems about the birth of his daughter (in The New Father's Mistake he mistakenly thinks the midwife has given a questionnaire meant for his wife to him, for him to fill out)-- and he has diary entries which are a kind of poetic prose about his Dad, when he was growing up. I think with a Christian perspective, the role of his Dad (his Father, as it were) is very important -- since he also becomes in a way your model for God. Maybe I'm just speaking for me, but if from a young age you hearing about "God the Father" you automatically associate the two. Whether this is good or bad I will reserve judgement on for another day.

John Hegley also likes potatoes. I don't know why, but he has various poems mentioning potatoes -- and at least one in French (French Potato Poem).

Words, the written page, don't do justice to John Hegley. You can read and enjoy his books like Dog and The Sound of Paint Drying (among many other fine works) but like anyone, you have to see him live to fully appreciate it. You have to see which poems are also songs -- as with Eddie Don't Like Furniture -- and see John Hegley rocking out a ukulele solo, you have to hear the rhythm, the tone of voice and the sardonic humour.

Unlike most poets, John Hegley is often touring -- or appearing once a month at a club in Kings Cross. If you like comedy, if you like poetry, or if you just want to be entertained he will satisfy you and more. I wish I could post every one of his poems here -- instead I can make some selected works available on request, and have uploaded some MP3 files of a couple of his performances. If you don't have the attention span for the first, I have also extracted a couple of shorter pieces from it.

John Hegley 1
John Hegley 2
Pear Shaped
Jesus Isn't Just For Christmas