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Tate Modern talks_lectures

Apples and Snakes at Tate: Poetry Evening with John Hegley

23 March 2018 at 19.30–20.30
portrait

Join poet, comic, singer, songwriter and glasses-wearer, John Hegley presenting poems from his two potatoes poems collections

Peace, Love and Potatoes contemplates subjects from painting, France and family to Daleks and of course potatoes, these pieces are by turns funny, moving, thought-provoking – and always brilliantly original.

New & Selected Potatoes includes work from different collections, with poems on love, family, France, art and the sea to dogs, dads, gods, taxidermy, carrots, spectacles and of course potatoes.

John will read from his work, followed by a Q & A and book signing.

Biography

John Hegley was born in Newington Green, North London, and was educated in Luton, Bristol and Bradford University. His first public performance monies came from busking his songs, initially outside a shoeshop in Hull, in the late Seventies. He performed on the streets of London in the early Eighties, fronting the Popticians, with whom he also recorded two sessions for John Peel, and has since been a frequent performer of his words, sung and spoken, on both local and national radio.

He has produced ten books of verse and prose pieces, two CDs and one mug, but his largest source of income is from stages on his native island. An Edinburgh Festival regular, he is noted for his exploration of such diverse topics as dog hair, potatoes, handkerchiefs and the misery of human existence. He is an occasional DJ, dancer and workshop leader, using drawing, poetry and gesture. He has been awarded an honorary Doctorate of Arts from what is now the University of Bedfordshire, and once performed in a women's prison in Columbia.

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23 March 2018 at 19.30–20.30

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