Tag Archives: Dr. John Cooper Clarke

Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: The Story Of Performance Poetry. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea. To some, perhaps misguided, possibly even consciously ignorant of the form and its turbulent history, the seismic revolt against strained form and stiff suited underwhelming development that shook the world post World War Two, is nothing more than pretension, a dip into the ocean without a bathing suit or a pair of trunks to hide the soul and yet arguably poetry has never been as popular now in the 21st Century at any time since the days when Allen Ginsberg tore apart convention at the Royal Albert Hall and delivered the 20th Century standard bearer, Howl.

Dr. John Cooper Clarke, Performance Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are performance poets, there are whirlwinds of poetic infusion but rarely do the two ever meet, Allen Ginsberg aside, none really have the pulling power that the modern world and medium fully deserves with the exception of the very positive and wonderfully punk, the gracious Dr. John Cooper Clarke.

To open up a night of music offered by Squeeze with the whirlwind persona that resides in John Cooper Clarke, a selection of poems beaten out of thin air and which magically entranced and threatened to spill out and dominate, not just the night ahead, but the thoughts of the audience for a good few weeks, was one in which should be applauded with great nods of enthusiasm to see a poetry master at work.