John Hegley at Waterside Arts

Celebrated poet and musician John Hegley is back at Waterside Arts with his latest show, An American In Luton, which contains a good deal of yet-to-be-published material alongside some back catalogue favourites.

Through poems and songs (and most likely pictures), An American In Luton tells a story of family, fantasy, love, loss – here’s more:  “The tall and unannounced Maine man appears in a seemingly ordinary 1960s English living room. He is the high chaperone and bringer of a grandmother who has not seen her stamp-collecting son for decades; her grandchildren, never. His reuniting job done, this curious visitor hands the children each a ten-dollar bill says his goodbyes and is gone – off up the suburban street, into the evening and perhaps a hotel in the town centre on his horse. (A hobby horse, in fact, given him by one of the children.) A Caravaggio and a wry dry stone-waller are also thrown into the mixture.” The show has been devised for adults but is not unsuitable for the odd nine-year-old.

His most recent show Biscuit of Destiny won a Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022 and showcased poems from his pamphlet A Scarcity Of Biscuit, published by Caldew Press in 2021 and inspired by a stint as writer-in-residence at the Keats House in London’s Hampstead in 2012.

John Hegley was born in Newington Green, London, in 1953, and grew up in Luton and Bristol. After attending Bradford University, he returned to London and joined the community arts collective Interaction; he has continued their interactive ethos ever since. During the early 1980s he was a regular performer at London’s Comedy Store and he has been a Perrier Comedy Award nominee. He also recorded with The Popticians, and featured on the BBC’s John Peel sessions in the 1980s. He has worked regularly on radio and television, and has toured nationally and internationally for the past 40 years, blending poetry, comedy and song.

You can also catch John Hegley later in the year at Morecambe Poetry Festival on Friday 12 September.