Luke Wright: A Poet’s Work is Never Done

Poetry and comedy, in principal, shouldn’t work together. That’s not to say that poetry can’t be funny, or that comedy can’t contain poetry – an hour spent with Philip Larkin or Daniel Kitson proves that much. Still, it’s a brave man who attempts to blur the line between two art-forms that rely so heavily on sincerity, on the one hand, and self-awareness on the other. It’s an even braver man who manages to pull it off successfully in front of a crowd.

Which makes Luke Wright a very brave man indeed. This one hour show takes in a half-dozen or so poems of varying length which are by turns witty, bitter and lyrical, all delivered with remarkable confidence and poise, interspersed with some adept stand-up comedy.

The stand-up sections deal mainly with Wright’s upbringing in the Essex town of Braintree – ironically named, he points out, “since there isn’t a brain or a tree for miles around” – although a portion of his ire is reserved for the particular “feminist” leanings of one fellow comedian.

The poems, meanwhile, range from the sublime to the slightly mediocre, but for the most part the foibles of modern life are handled with inventiveness and a surprising lyricism. But Wright is at his best when he unmasks a well-hidden streak of bitterness and an oddly premature nostalgia for days gone by that inescapably recalls the late John Betjeman. With fellow Braintree boy Andrew Motion already in the top job, Wright fully lives up to his claim of being “Britain’s alternative laureate.”