I Wanna Be Yours: John Cooper Clarke

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I’ve worked with the best of them, but The Fall I would watch night in, night out. Each performance seemed unique.”

There are precious few poetry exerts and/or outtakes included here - as well as the odd passage written more poetically, to remind us of the literary brilliance that JCC can create, on the whole though, it’s written in a chatty, conversational manner as befitting the every day chatter and raconteuring that we’d expect from JCC. One of the greatest and coolest things I've always been able to tell people is that, not only do I live in the town where Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Humpty Dumpty were written, but that the captivating individual that is John Cooper Clarke lives here. And when you happen to see him, in these very ordinary settings, it's a bit like magic. He has such a striking and inimitable presence, it's like seeing a Tim Burton character come to life. He's like Edward Scissorhand's older and more sensitive brother. Clarke is a great raconteur and in this book - social historian, a hugely engaging, eminently (on the whole) likeable personality, a punk poet of the people, who has been hugely influential in both poetry and culture alike. Clarke, John Cooper (2020). I wanna be yours. London. ISBN 978-1-5098-9610-3. OCLC 1148197088. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) I've also had the joy of meeting him a few years ago and he is a very lovely gentleman indeed. So it was with delight I received his memoirs 'I wanna be yours' as a Birthday present from my friend. And eager to know more about this elusive figure, I dived in.

John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet who first became famous as a " punk poet" in the late 1970s. [1] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums. Around this time, he performed on stage with several punk and post-punk bands and continues to perform regularly. Probably the least interesting section in many ways is, inevitably, the one dealing with JCC's years of drug addiction. Reading about his adventures on tour around the world with various groups and artists is to enjoy a colourful whirlwind of people and places, entertainingly described. However, the story of his constant pursuit of narcotics soon becomes exhausting to read, although it powerfully brings home the nature and effects of addiction: in this he pulls few punches. Clarke is no saint and he has his flaws, but he recounts a life well lived. This is a tale well told with lots of self-deprecating one liners, but Clarke’s voice is remarkable and he has to be heard. Some of his early stuff is raw and angry, like Beasley Street: Adams, Tim (5 April 2014). "John Cooper Clarke interview: 'Poetry is not something you have to retire from' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 July 2016.

What impresses me the most about his poetry, and by extension this book, is how artistic his artlessness is. Clarke writes with the same fervour as anyone who loves producing doggerel for the masses, but these works aren't just throwaway poems. He understands and applies the underpinning skills of a great poet. His sprung rhymes cascade down with unrelenting glee, and he can bring his unique poetic voice to themes big and small. "I've Fallen in Love with my Wife' is a most romantic paean to the ordinariness of marital life, whilst 'Bongo's Trousers' is a catchy piece of satirical poetry that definitely deflates the wankery of celebrities who try and lecture people about poverty and social justice. His 'Haiku No.1' should be taught to every student trying to wrap their head around the form and 'Pies' is (like so many of his other works) a masterpiece of technique with a big dash of humour. He said: “It can be done, clearly, but it ain’t easy. I like to say I did it in two ways: gradually, and suddenly. The fact is you need help, though. My message is always the same: don’t even do it once. When the teenage John Cooper Clarke announced he wanted to be a poet, his alarmed parents asked for examples of people who had made a living from it. “I discovered that most modern poets had to work as teachers, bank clerks, insurance salesmen, doctors, diplomats, railroad workers, tax collectors, publishers or postal clerks,” he recalls in his memoir. Even Philip Larkin “turned out to be a librarian by day”. His father’s feelings about these literary aspirations were summed up in three words: “Get a job.” So he did. Various – Short Circuit – Live At The Electric Circus (Vinyl) at Discogs". Discogs.com. 10 October 1978 . Retrieved 23 May 2014. saw Clarke present a documentary on Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the BBC's second series of The Secret Life of Books. [25] He has appeared as a guest on the comedy panel show Would I Lie To You? on 14 August 2015 [26] and again on 7 January 2022. [27]a b c Hattenstone, Simon (29 May 2012). "John Cooper Clarke: 'It's diabolical how poor I am' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 October 2015. Clarke added: “It was a tedious saying among hippies: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. I was very much part of the problem.” Every drug addict is virtually the same person. There’s not really much point in dwelling on it. I needed money more than ever, so I had to work. The glamour was flaking off with every new job. I really felt like I was selling my sorry ass.”

However, this has not sold me on autobiographies as I thought it would. Don't get me wrong, I love JCC and you could feel his dry humour throughout. There were some great sections of writing but on the whole, it felt like a bit of a slog to get through. I think this is because he details a lot of social history, particularly in Manchester in the 60s and the lists of significant people who some of us will never have heard of get tedious. I appreciate that Clarke probably feels that these details are a big part of his most formative years but I felt it could have been cut down. I Wanna Be Yours takes the reader from John's birth in 1949 through to the present day, and what a wild and wonderful life it has been. His impeccable taste and poet's sensibility was evident from a very young age. Clarke was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1949. [2] He lived in the Higher Broughton area of the city and became interested in poetry after being inspired by his English teacher, John Malone, [3] whom he described as "a real outdoor guy, an Ernest Hemingway type, red blooded, literary bloke". [4] During an April 2018 episode of Steve Jones's radio show Jonesy's Jukebox, Clarke revealed one of his early inspirations to be the poet Sir Henry Newbolt, reciting from memory a portion of Newbolt's poem "Vitaï Lampada".

Poets, Punks, Beatniks and Counter Culture Heroes (2010), Ozit – includes rare JCC film footage from the 1980s If you're in recovery or thinking about it, definitely don't read this as it is a quite upbeat retelling of tales of scoring and how good various episodes of that were. I certainly know more now about what it entails than I did before. And whilst he is clean, it does feel like there's a degree of yearning there, but I'm guessing that's the way it is for most recovering addicts perhaps.

Arctics go for poetry". Ananova. Archived from the original on 30 June 2007 . Retrieved 20 August 2007. a b Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.74. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. I Wanna Be Yours is very much a book of four quarters. The first, detailing his childhood and early life in a mainly Jewish area (he acted as a "shabas goy" for his orthodox neighbours) of Salford in Manchester is fascinating: as a piece of writing on the social history of this part of Lancashire in the early 50s it is glorious, vivid and full of detail. JCC's writing evokes so much atmosphere that you can visualise everything in glorious sepia. Clarke was the subject of a BBC Four documentary, Evidently... John Cooper Clarke, in May 2012, screened as part of the BBC's Punk Britannia season. [15] That same year, Clarke featured in rapper Plan B's feature film Ill Manors and subsequently the Ill Manors album. [18] Clarke receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford, 2013Tim Adams (6 April 2014). "John Cooper Clarke interview: 'Poetry is not something you have to retire from' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 June 2016. I started out with a book by British poet John Cooper Clarke. I've seen Clarke several times as the Dictionary Corner guest on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and I always really enjoy him. It took me a while to get one of his books, though, since it seems that his focus is mostly in spoken word performance rather than published work. This turns out to make a lot of sense because his poetry absolutely BEGS to be read aloud. There is something about his word choices and the way he strings them together that I find extremely enticing. Crossing The Floor, another particular favourite, is more contentious; it caused one Goodreads reviewer to become so enraged that he decided he'd put the book in the bin, rather than donate it to a charity shop where it would at least have done some good. The reviewer condemns the poem as offensively transphobic, but imo he completely misses the point. In his typically mordant style, JCC tells the story of a man who's just fed up with being a man and doing 'man' things, and wants to dress as a woman instead - but he doesn't sound 100% committed, and he's very realistic: