John Hegley was born in 1953 in Newington Green, and moved to Luton at an early age. After leaving school he worked as a bus conductor and social security clerk, until he went to Bradford University, eking out his grant by working as a nurse in a local mental hospital. He has worked with two children's theatre groups, 'Interaction' and 'Soapbox', and began his highly successful career at the notoriously tough comedy store in 1980. 'His audience is huge,' writes Peter Forbes, '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.'

His first notable media exposure was the John Peel sessions (Radio One) with Popticians in 1983/4, with songs about spectacles and the misery of human existence. After publishing Glad to Wear Glasses in 1990 another six titles followed filled with verse, prose, drawings drama and photographs of potatoes, and the CD/Cassette 'Saint and Blurry'. In 2000, John received an honorary Arts Doctorate from Luton University and had his most notable live engagement in a women's prison, Medellin, Columbia.

John's latest collections are The Sound of Paint Drying (Methuen 2003), Uncut Confetti (Methuen 2006) and The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet (Donut Press 2009).

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Related links

› John Hegley's website

› John Hegley profile on contemporarywriters.com

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An old favourite
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. I loved the mixing of realities in this story I discovered in Luton Library in the Sixties

A new favourite
Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches - marvellous prose poem travelogue causing a feeling of tranquil reverie.

A current interest
Modern Poetry in Translation 1983 - picked it up cheap second hand. Introduced by Ted Hughes and including Chechen, Finnish, Nuer and others which broaden the mind although the orginals are not printed

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Featured poem

An Address to potential aliens

Is there any body out there?
Have you got ears for this?
Have you got osmosis?
Do you ever say 'to be honest'
Do you ever say 'for my sins'?
Or are sinfulness and honesty
where another world begins?
Do you wear a pair of glasses
for maybe you have eyes.
Do you start off small and increase in size
but lose your sense of wonderment in the process?
Do you have those things on tube trains,
I don't know what they're called
do you have things in your world that you haven't got a name for
is it the stars you aim for?
Do you ever get appalled
if your brand new central heating
has been shoddily installed
by a bunch of cowboys?

John Hegley © 2010