My poetry ain't pompous

Life-changing moments can arrive in the least expected of places and for John Hegley, the bespectacled performance poet, the future was mapped out in front of a Hull shoe shop.

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"It would have been 1978," he said. "My girlfriend had a stall selling stuff at the outdoor market, so I travelled over with her. I went down the road a bit - out of her hearing - and set up outside a shoe shop.

"I stood outside the window and by the time I got back, I'd made more money than she had.

"What was interesting was I knew I could sing, but I did not know I could do humour. That was the crucial thing. I felt I had entertained them - I had given them a laugh."

Since starting out as a performer, after some false starts as a bus conductor and a civil servant, Hegley has created a niche for himself. His poetry, filled with humour and interspersed with mandolin music, defies easy categorisation. If anything, it's more in that glorious English tradition of puncturing pomposity.

At one recent gig at the Hammersmith Lyric in London, John encouraged the audience to make animals out of handkerchiefs, a favourite stage ploy for the poet.

"Out of 2,000 handkerchiefs, we ended up with 500 unicorns," he said.

John's show, which arrives in Barton-Upon-Humber next week, is certainly an alternative to the more earnest practitioners of poetry. Though he defends any accusation he's a lightweight alternative.

"There's lots of different types of poetry, it's just that mine is a bit more tipsy," he said. Some of what I say is quite sober, but I say it in a tipsy way."

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His conversation is punctuated with scraps of song and musings about a limerick he's writing for his gig at the Ropewalk. The comic poem, about a rope-maker of Barton-Upon-Humber "who even made ropes in his slumber", will help him connect with the audience.

"If you don't connect, it's an opportunity missed," he said. "It's a live performance, so if someone asks me a question I'll answer them."

Previous performances have seen him organising dog-drawing competitions during the interval or encouraging the audience to write poetry themselves, with acrostics, in which every letter of a word is used to form a poem.

"If you were to pick, say, leaf, you could have Luton Excel At Football." Though, the Luton Town supporter added, a little ruefully: "It does not have to be based on fact."

For now though, John's thoughts are drifting back to his Hull debut outside the shoe shop.

"It would be quite nice to compile some poems about shoes," he said.

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"It was the 70s then, so you can imagine what the fashions were like.

"I used to have some loafers, as I recall."

JOHN HEGLEY When: Friday, January 15, 7.30pm Where: The Ropewalk, Maltkiln Road, Barton-Upon-Humber Tickets: Pounds 10-Pounds 12 Call: (01652) 660380 Website:

Although some of what I say is quite sober, I say it in a tipsy way John Hegley

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