Unpredictable poetry night on the cards

Jun 4 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

John Hegley, comedian / poet _158

COMEDY poet John Hegley returns to Liverpool tomorrow night.

The author of My Dog is a Carrot, Glad to Wear Glasses and The Sound of Paint Drying, Hegley regularly appears in the city to an audience who will never see the same show twice.

He will be performing at the Unity Theatre with old friend Tony Curtis on keyboards for some extra musical accompaniment.

Hegley himself is not adverse to breaking out the old mandolin.

His new show Song and Dances is about . . . well,it’s about . . . “There’ll be potato dancing, some fig roll flicking . . . we’ll be getting some fig rolls involved,” Hegley ponders.

“There’ll be quite a few new poems. I’m trying to get the audience to make noises other than laughter. Sometimes a big sigh is a nice sound . . . just trying to explore other responses.”

Hegley first performed in Liverpool at the Bluecoat with his band the Popticians in the mid-1980s, a band that had the approval of John Peel and wrote “songs about spectacles and the misery of human existence. There’s always a crazy welcome and people are so grateful when you come to see them in Liverpool,” he said.

And he even has a new poem celebrating Luton Town’s 5-0 defeat at the hands of LFC, which simply runs: “With Luton in receivership, I think it could be said

“That that night, there were two sides in the red”.