Great to hear John Cooper Clarke interviewed on Desert Island Discs recently. The punk poet laureate and erstwhile co-habitee of Nico was on fine form, giving forth for over 40 minutes in that unique soothing voice of his, and it was particularly interesting to hear his thoughts on the writing process. His bottom line is don’t over-analyse your work and always look for the universal in the particular – discussing unlikely subjects emphasizes the significance of the quotidian. What he means by “unlikely” subjects is neatly illustrated by his glee at discovering that the Arctic Monkeys were to cover his poem I Wanna Be Yours. “That’s a terrific name,” he gushes, “there’s no monkeys in the arctic! Immediately you got a dichotomy. It’s gonna stick it in yer head for ever”. Alex Turner changed some of the words but the glorious opening stanza - I wanna be your vacuum cleaner/Breathing in your dust/I wanna be your Ford Cortina/I will never rust – remains intact.
Clarke came to prominence of course during the punk era of the late 1970s, and what his lyrics have in common with the punk sensibility is what he describes as “the shortest way of conveying something really big.” Among his favourite lyrics from the time is The Ramones’ Teenage Lobotomy which he slightly misquotes as How the hell am I gonna tell ’em/I ain’t got no cerebellum. It is precisely this attention to lyricism that characterises the Clarke poetic style, my own favourites being The Day My Dad Went Mad (The kitchen has been ransacked/Ski trails in the hall/A chicken has been dhansaked/And thrown against the wall), and Conditional Discharge, an ode to venereal disease (When the public-at-large don't know they got it/Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit), and it is revealing to hear him describe his own literary journey from the Romantic poets through Poe to his self-professed favourite, Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Not only the catalyst for meeting his future wife, Baudelaire inspired Clarke to pursue the life of the “useless flâneur” (as he himself puts it) after the spoken singing style of – of all people – Rex Harrison had convinced Clarke that poetry could function as a form of public entertainment. Clarke’s position as the pioneer of public performance poetry (I hope he’d enjoy that alliteration) should never be underestimated, for it was he who showed that by using only “a pen, a notebook and idleness,” it was possible to making a living from writing poetry and reading it aloud.
Never one for the political bandwagon, John Cooper Clarke’s poetry has captured the mood of British society for half a century. For more Clarke treats, hear his Evidently Chickentown at the end of this episode of The Sopranos from 2007, read this 2012 interview in The Guardian, and see him discussing haiku, minimalism and far, far more than you’d expect to see on British TV on the hilarious UK show Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown (worth seeing both Parts 1 and 2). Enjoy.
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