Reviewing a poet, even one as slippery, speedy and beloved as Dr. John Cooper Clarke, is no easy feat. Like trying to explain away a comedian’s live set, a reviewer is doomed to fail, as no one can replicate the delicate dance of varied rhythms and word jazz. All we can do is offer readers a blurry snapshot of the action.
The wild-haired poet laureate for Great Britain’s punk-rock scene started out with late-’70s EPs such as Innocents, albums such as Où Est La Maison De Fromage and books such as Directory that were just as wiry as Clarke—and often just as lean and mean. Beyond being tied to the claustrophobic, caustic reality of the U.K.’s Thatcherism, the fast-talking public speaker expanded his comic criticism into something often more fanciful, certainly funny and often surprisingly romantic. Without being a mere stand-up comedian with existential, educated rhyme schemes, Clarke famously took bits and pieces from the history of Britain’s public monologuists (actors Stanley Holloway and Rex Harrison are who the good doctor is fond of rhapsodizing) with a hardcore dose of quicksilver Beats (think latter-day, unsentimetal William S. Burroughs) and forged a unique storytelling/performance-poet brand whose literal voice is pure Lancastrian/Mancunian.
Rhyming in rhythm, astutely alliterative and salaciously satirical in sometimes the silliest of ways, Clarke is currently touring the U.S. following the 2020 release of his prose-y autobiography, I Wanna Be Yours, and his just-published book of poetry, What. Hitting up the sold-out Loft at City Winery Philadelphia, Clarke described his poetry thusly: “Imagine the Titanic with a lisp—unthinkable.”
Teasing the audience with his first poem, “Official Guest List,” Clarke rattled off names such as “Jerry Hall, she’s very tall, from the Albert Hall, at all, at all, Rob Lowe, Dr. No, Shemp, Larry and Moe” with equal star billing and trippy, rapier rhythmic aplomb. He didn’t necessarily slow to speak to the mournful politics of “Beasley Street” or his Sopranos-used classic “Evidently Chickentown,” but he did lend each rant a certain pointed accent. Returning to his new poems from What, Clarke did find new accents and characterizations to tell his street-y soliloquies and star-fucker operettas. And along with several blunt form poems from What such as “Lydia, Girl With An Itch” (“Lydia, Lydia, get rid o’ yer chlamydia/Only an idiot would ever consider ya”) and “Necrophilia” (“Fed up with foreplay and all that palaver?/Have a cadaver”), Clarke made up a few swift, fresh limericks on the spot. “Who doesn’t love a limerick?” he questioned with a fast cackle.
Who indeed. Clarke finished the set with alt-kids favorite “I Wanna Be Yours” (Arctic Monkeys used his poem as the basis for their hit single of the same name) and found the fire for greatest hits “I’ve Fallen In Love With My Wife” and “Get Back On Drugs You Fat Fuck.”
What other poet in the 21st century has greatest hits?
—A.D. Amorosi
