Go and play in the middle
my Mum used to watch out of the window
these boys who played football
on the green in front of the bungalow
she used to stand well back
so she couldn't be seen
and when the ball hit the wall of our garden
she said to my Dad
it's hit our wall again Bob
go out and tell them
and my Dad would go out and tell them
maybe eight or nine times in a day
to go and play in the middle
and immediately he had told them
my Mum would be on the watch
for the next time he would need sending out
and sometimes it was only a few moments
after he had come back in
Commentary
In the bright and innocent days of ‘alternative comedy’ John Hegley was known as an ‘alternative poet’ and for a while he was on TV quite regularly here in the UK. Rarely seen on the box now, he still tours the country performing in his one-man shows and is a regular at the Edinburgh festival - catch him if you can.
This poem is a very early one of his - not sure why I chose this particular one amongst many others, for some reason it just made me laugh the most when I was re-reading the book this evening. But I don’t think it’s a bad choice
- it’s pretty representative: his Dad, his Bungalow and his childhood in Luton feature regularly in his poems - he’s not just kept in touch with his roots, he’s positively milked them :-)
And I know he wouldn’t mind me saying that - typical of Hegley, he’s even written an poem poking fun at the way he writes poems poking fun at his roots. Here it is [assuming that Martin and Abraham don’t notice me smuggling, deftly, a second poem into my submission] [we’ve done it ourselves! - martin]
LUTON
(a poem about the town of my upbringing and the conflict between my working class origins and the middle class status conferred upon me by a university education)
I remember Luton
as I'm swallowing my crout'n
[two poems eh? how on earth is Sitaram going to fit that into his index?] [the index is large, it contains multitudes - martin]
To really appreciate his poems you have to hear John read them himself - there’s a brief sound bite on his website http://www.johnhegley.co.uk , where there’s a also a biog, merchandise etc. If you’d like to hear him he’s actually on tour in the UK at the moment (winter 2004), details on the site.
Enjoy
Stephen Axbey
Links
Reiterating the link to Hegley’s site: http://www.johnhegley.co.uk
And go reread Poem #1407 while you’re at it :)