Five Sugars Please, John Hegley's bestselling thin third volume, is a collection of poems and prose pieces, accompanied by the author's drawings. It contains cafés ancient and modern, Romans and Martians, and the mystery of the 'men's face-cloth', as well as the story 'Declaring Martian Law'. There are extracts from various journals: Portugal, India and Berwick-upon-Tweed, as well as meditations upon greed, Rembrandt, sleeping bags and doing the hoovering. Properly.
John Hegley is not a normal poet … the truth of the matter is that in all the best poetry, profundity and humour become one. The Elizabethans had a name for it - the Poetry of Wit
Scotsman
Hegley is that literary rarity - a successful poet, whose slim volumes of verse repay debts to the pop ballads of the Merseybeat bards such as Roger McGough and Brian Patte, the psychedelic psycho-babble of John Lennon, and the nonsense rhymes of Victorian Edward Lear and Lewis Carrol
Guardian
As a comic poet he's unrivalled
Time Out