John Cooper Clark - borrowed from his website.
So, never mind all the royal fuss down south... the exciting event for many of us recently was a TV documentary about poet John Cooper Clarke (it's here - available for a few more days). Maybe it's because I'm an (English) Northerner but I do love JCC (and I've written bits about him before - here and here). For a start I love his accent (never mind the eternal "punk poet" - how about "alternative king of the north"?) but I also love his total devotion to just being himself and not what other people want him to be, his use of language and his dedication to rhyme. I like that he's such a music fan too (wisely he's hung around with musicians far more than with poets...), that he's so naturally funny and entertaining but at the same time deathly serious, in his way. I love that he lost some years to drugs (happens to the best people, you know) and that he has come back from the beyond, in some ways, stronger than ever before. What a guy... even if he is, technically, from the wrong side of the Pennines (as they say). You can't win 'em all.
The new documentary has more talking heads than a poetry festival has extremely opinionated individuals and some of them you will enjoy more than others, depending on your taste. I enjoyed Billy Bragg's contributions (because I love him possibly even more than JCC... no definitely I do... Billy sings this) and nods from comedian Bill Bailey and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner but there are lots of others to spot (Steve Coogan, Stewart Lee, Mark Radcliffe, Plan B, Craig Charles... it's a long list). You did feel they struggled to get some women onto the list of heads (total 3 - journalist Miranda Sawyer, singer/songwriter Kate Nash and "GCSE Syllabus Selector" Gill Murray... for they learn JCC at school now, apparently) but some is better than none...
Still, the heads are really secondary and it is, as it should be, JCC who is the star of this show. I've selected my favourite quotes from the show and pasted them for your delectation below:
I'm grateful I never had any encouragement actually. You look at the poets that got encouraged by their parents and they're all shit.
If you see me going into a vegetative state, right, I've been there before and it's not that bad. Don't go making assumptions - "oh, he's dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, we'd better kill him he was a very proud man."
Poetry like all art is utterly useless, it is, fucking useless - that's the beauty of it, it's a luxury.
Because I rhyme things my preoccupation is with technique, the craft of it, how best to put this so that it, you know, supplies this rhyme. In between those two rhyming words is your imagination then coming into play.
People who make a distinction between written poetry and recited poetry make a mistake, I think, because all poetry should be read aloud.
And to end - a video of the poem of JCC's that most on the programme seemed to pick as their favourite:
20 comments:
I have never heard of him Rachel but I shall now look him up and give some of his work an airing at our next poetry meeting, where a group of us meet to read other people's poetry - a very civilised afternoon I might add.
Read them through first, Weaver! There's some ripe vocabulary... There are lots of his poems on his website
http://www.johncooperclarke.com/
Just click on poems and there's a list.
x
I'd never heard of him, either, but enjoyed that poem so will look at more. Thanks, Rachel, X
Try and grab the documentary while it's still on the i-player too, Eryl. There's quite a lot of his poems in it. It's called "Evidently... John Cooper Clarke".
x
interesting comment on parental encouragement... must remember not to encourage Danger.
Beautifully put. And a much-needed distraction from the jubilee.
Greetings from London.
Isn't he brilliant? Saw him at Glastonbury years ago.
My favourites are Chickentown and I Married a Monster from Outer Space.
Re encouraging your kids... though his folks may not have encouraged him initially re the writing you do get the impression that his was/is a loving family who supported him in other ways. The fact that several of the talking heads mention that up to the early '90s the way to get hold of him was by phoning "his Mam" shows you that he was still pretty involved with his family. And he speaks of his Dad fondly on the doc. I think.
My Mum once said to me "but dear, you could do so much better than poetry". Bless...
x
Chickentown was used in the last scene on a Sopranos episode in series 6. It complimented the tension and drama perfectly.
!!Spoiler and bad language alert!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2DShC4GhVc
Indeed. He mentions it in the documentary... and I wrote a little about it here
http://crowd-pleasers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/new-jersey-manchester-and-possibly-best.html
x
Recent interview with JCC here too
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/29/john-cooper-clarke-punk-poet-interview
Great stuff! A kind of 'Desolation Row' with more humour.
If you watch the doc. you can what a naturally funny guy JCC is. He just can't help himself, I think, which is my favourite kind of funny person. Comedians who save their humour just for their act kind of annoy me... I like humour to be free and out there, not so constrained and controlled. I sound like a real hippy, huh?
x
p.s. I love how you see everything in relation to Dylan, SW!
x
Hippy! I love it. Where have all the hippies gone? Thank God you exist.
Yes, it's funny because JCC is very much associated with punk (that was a reaction against hippies in some ways... but a reaction against lots of other things too... and a new wave...) but, despite my age, I kind of missed punk really. I liked one or two punk tracks but I was kind of in a rockers gang at school (north east of England in the early '80s - still a whole lotta rockin' goin' on there...) and so I kind of missed the punk scene (though I saw it pass in the pub somewhere and I've had lots of old punk friends). I always think it was partly to do with the lack of singing in punk (there is some - but not much - much more shouting). I've always liked good singing (in soul, funk, disco, pop, rock, blues, folk, jazz...) and I really miss it when it's not there. For example JCC calls the Ramones the best band ever (or something) but they leave me stone cold (ok - so it's fast...). No accounting for taste.
JCC has done radio shows on 6 Music and I have enjoyed him. He doesn't play that much punk in fact... older stuff on the whole I think (rock'n'roll, blues, soul... good stuff).
x
Enjoyed him? Enjoyed them perhaps...
x
Got to catch that before it disappears.
He was brilliant on the Clive Anderson Radio 4 show a couple of weeks back. Name currently eluding me. Loose Ends!
Do you know I don't think I've ever listened to that show! Never have been much of a R4 listener... just the odd documentary or something. But then I'm not in the car as much as you...
x
So, it was here where I'd read the post. And I thought it was chez Titus the Dog. I saw Jonnie the other night on BBC4's series about punk and then I remembered that I'd read his stuff somewhere before. Top geezer.
Greetings from London.
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