Glastonbury Festival - Poetry for the People

John Cooper Clarke

Poetry for the People

Acoustic Stage - Sunday

The immortally thin punk poet, John Cooper Clarke, took to the stage at the Acoustic Tent in a flurry of hairspray and salty one-liners at this year's Glastonbury, drawing a nearly full tent for poetry; a happy novelty nowadays.

Delivering a set of old favourites ("Hire Car" and "Johnny Clarke's First (and only) Haiku" amongst others) and some newer pieces, the wily old fox kept the crowds roaring, even for the less familiar work - poems about taxis, high-rise estates and gender-swapping.

Clarke has delivered and honed the same set - and the same jokes - for twenty years, so it's refreshing to hear something newish; more so that the crowd loved it all.

His performances are as much about the digressive, joky introductions as they are about the poetry, which is a shame as his verse is some of the sharpest, most socially aware of its period. At his best, he can bend language round his painfully thin frame and then tickle it into submission.

He captures the essence of life in Britain with remarkable clarity and his use of words in rhythm is phenomenal. He also pilfers popular culture to ecstatic effect. Simply, anyone who can deliver a short lecture on the birth of the Haiku and then read one and make everyone laugh should be encouraged to write more.

Come on John; less jokes, more poetry. You know we want it.

Adam Horovitz

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