Tell You What
The legendary Dr John Cooper Clarke returned to the Corn Exchange. Miriam Balanescu sits down with the people’s poet
Pensmith, lyricist and unrivalled wit John Cooper Clarke needs little to no introduction. Despite first ascending to fame in the 80s – and this year celebrating his 75th birthday – the punk icon remains unchanged.
This month, the doctor (a title he gained in 2013) will return to Cambridge to honour 50 years in show business and share material from his latest collection, What. “Get him while he’s alive,” John teases over his landline (moments after ‘listening to the obituary programme on Radio 4’). “I think that’s what the flyer says, isn’t it?”
What is a stylistic continuation of his previous work – a scathingly satirical and riotously funny commentary on pop culture. “It’s been an aggregation of stuff that I’ve been writing since I brought out my last book of poetry,” John says. “It’s my annual look at the last three days.”
But what about the past 50 years? “The trajectory is very good,” John states. “I like that it’s got a movie quality about it, starting with too much too soon, getting all washed up in the wilderness years of the 80s, and then coming back like Sinatra.
There’s a lot of drama involved. Good stories like that involve time. I’m quite outrageous in that regard: the length of time that I wasn’t doing anything.”
Back in the day, there was no call for poetry
There are, John suggests, plans to translate that story to cinema: “I think Johnny Depp owes me one for swiping my image in Edward Scissorhands. That’s exactly how I looked at the time – minus the cutlery.”
Despite his rock ’n’ roll reputation, John is first and foremost a poet. “The best day’s work I ever did was drag poetry into the world of public entertainment where it belongs,” he says. “Back in the day, there was no call for poetry. Nobody in my social circle ever bemoaned the fact there weren’t any poetry recitals in Salford.
“If people looked at their relationship to poetry, I don’t think it’s as alien as the folk myth goes. Look at the monologue artists in the old days of the music hall, Harry Champion and later people like Stanley Holloway, Phil Harris and Rex Harrison – you can’t call that singing! In My Fair Lady, it’s talking in time to some invisible orchestra.”
Observations on society and culture have long been at the crux of John’s writing. “The social stuff is very broad,” he claims. “I don’t like to deal with the narrow politics of any particular period; I write about the eternal things.
“I just like to take what comes out of the TV, run it through the old processing machine inside my head and regurgitate it as poetry.”
However – rather miraculously – this poet has managed to steer clear of the digital world, as he possesses neither a mobile phone or a computer. “I’m not so convinced that I did the right thing, having to suffer thousands of daily punishments visited upon the analogue community,” John laughs. “You have to decide to get involved with computers. I didn’t even put it to the test. I just shrugged it off as not being applicable to me or anything that I do.
“I don’t have a computer because I know how great they are. Plus, I already know too much anyway – I could do with forgetting some sh*t. But I still believe that, personally, it doesn’t offer me anything other than the end of my career.
“If I was to write a novel, the most recent setting would have to be something like 1983. It’s pretty amazing, then, that I’m so relevant when I’m such an anachronism in many ways.” As a true testament to this, audiences turn out to John’s performances in droves.
Cambridge is one of the cities John often returns to on his tours, where he fondly remembers cruising along the River Cam with his wife and daughter 20-odd years ago.
When told that motorboats aren’t often spotted on the Backs any more – possibly something to do with the wildlife – John seems incredulous: “Swans are more dangerous than motorboats,” he says.
