I've said before that John Cooper Clarke is part of the soundtrack of my life, so any collection of his poetry, in particular, has to be read with his voice in my head. It works best when read by the author himself, but in the written form, it's easy to go back and back and back over the bits that just make you go, well well well.
WHAT is a new collection of work, a scathing, pointed and caustic grouping of subtle, and none-too-subtle commentaries on everything from celebrity, smooth operators (operetta's), necrophilia, anger, and yet more.
Favourites, in no particular order:
Blue Collar Wallah
There's a heteronormative handyman West of the Fairtrade aisle
He's wearing full-length trousers
And a patriarchal smile
or try:
The Marital Miseries of the Modern Misogynist Male or The Rime of the Ancient Marrier
From the doghouse to the cat flap and back again without a map
He could be heading for a slap
His fractured fairytale gone zap
Just like I said was gonna happen
As with all things John Cooper Clarke, read the book, listen to the audio, read the thing again and again and again.
What
Dr John Cooper Clarke's dazzling, scabrous voice has reverberated through pop culture for decades, his influence on generations of performance poets and musicians plain for all to see. In WHAT, the original 'People's Poet' comes storming out of the gate with an uproarious new collection, reminding us why he is one of Britain's most beloved writers and performers. James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Jesus nobody is safe from the punk rocker's acerbic pen – and that's just the first poem.
Hot on the heels of The Luckiest Guy Alive and his sprawling, encyclopaediac memoir I Wanna Be Yours , the good Doctor returns with his most trenchant collection of poems yet. Vivid and alive, with a sensitivity only a writer with a life as varied and extraordinary as Cooper Clarke's could summon, WHAT is an exceptional collection from one of our foremost satirists.
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