Peace Love & Potatoes

There's a looking back in hunger with a side portion of spud. There's Rothko and the Daleks and those with whom I've common blood. My Folies Bergère grand-mother, my brother who would put his socks under my pillow once he'd peeled them off his foot. There's the man who liked to drive in an imaginary car, there are amorous encounters on the bus and in the cinema....

The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet

In this book you will meet Monsieur Robinet (our Gallic small town hero) together with a cast of friends, neighbours, relatives and his laconic dog, Chirac. Do not be concerned. Monsieur Robinet is a good man and can always be depended upon, even when life takes a turn for the strange.

THE SOUND OF PAINT DRYING
This collection brings together many of his trademark themes - dogs, glasses, Luton - and joins them with a remarkable, moving and funny series of meditations, poems and stories on the parent child-relationship, from John's response to his father to John's daughter's response to him.

John describes the book thus: A collection of poems, sketches, songs, stories and diary entries which date back to my days in a Luton bungalow. More recently documented are my travels to Australia, Cyprus, Columbia, Thailand and France. The French trip, which was recorded for BBC Radio 4, was stimulated by a painting of old Nice made by my father in 1931. It was my self-appointed task to find the scene and paint my own version.

The travels are littered with ordinary things painted large: potatoes, facecloths, blancmange, throat sweets, and litter.

MY DOG IS A CARROT
John Hegley's doggie may not wear glasses, but then she is a carrot. Enter this poet's weird, witty and bespectacled world and meet grandma with her filthy glasses, the organic leak who has learned how to speak, the octopus who gets a nasty shocktopus, and a whole cast of other interesting characters. Surprising, serious, and sometimes just plain surprising, this is a collection of poems even your dog will love. Unless, of course, your dog is a carrot too.

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DOG
A mongrel mix of prose, poem, cartoon strip, letter and limerick, musings upon his mum, his chum, his love, his love's loss and salvation at the paws of his chum's mum's Welsh Border Collie, John Hegley's eagerly awaited new collection of verse and drawings ties in with the national Dog tour which naturally touches on all things canine:

'The dog is better suited to the hat even though the cat seems born to it by rhyming.'

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LOVE CUTS
Love Cuts includes tales of plasters and other aspects of the fabric of life. There are various episodes of emotional injury and subsequent attempts at wound management, including a lengthy documentation of the escapist quest for the holy spectacles. Alongside this there are further investigations into the author's relationship with art, his father, football, spuds, railways and sack racing.

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These Were Your Father's
John Hegley's fourth volume of poems, continues to explore the author's preoccupation with gods, dogs, dads and spectacles; the major addition to the list is life around the campfire, which is tackled in a longer drama concerning John, his friend Tony, his dog Hermann and their bicycles. Elsewhere, buses, trains, rains, Romans and rice grains are featured in the poems which are usually comic and, where possible, poignant also. There is a persistent autobiographical strand, as well as a sprinkling of the author's line drawings and some surprises which it is best not to spoil by telling you about it here.

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Five Sugars Please
John's best-selling third volume is a collection of poems and prose pieces, accompanied by the author's drawings. It contains pieces on cafés ancient and modern, Romans and Martians, and the mystery of 'men's facecloths' as well as the story 'Declaring Martian Law'.

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Can I Come Down Now Dad?
This volume from Hegley contains poems about Luton and string, dogs and logs, trains and Roman remains. Some of the poems have been read by the author in live performance all over Britain, on television and radio. A number of them have also been published in the weekend Guardian. They range from pathos to broad comedy.

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BEYOND OUR KENNEL
Mainly verse, occasionally prose and poetry, autobiographical in places, especially Luton. Embedded throughout, as in 'poem de terre', are homages to his father's French roots. It is also full of lyrical journey's by foot, train and bus, which culminate in Hegley's most ambitious poem to date: the lengthy rhyming narrative 'Beyond Our Kennel'. There are no cats.

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GLAD TO WEAR GLASSES
Glad to Wear Glasses is John Hegley's first full length collection. It includes several of his pieces regularly features in the 'Guardian'. Here are over seventy of Hegley's surprising, comic, serious, disconcerting, economical and always original poems.

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THE HEGLEY BOX SET
John's verse is full of poignant encounters with domestic violence, familial betrayal, everyday absurdities, dogs, vegetables and epiphanies of one kind or another. In the Hegley Box you get all - well, most of - John Hegley in one big grab.

KINGDOM COMES MUG
Now you can read John's poetry during your tea break, at breakfast, with butter scones.....

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