'What Me Mam Taught Me'

Sometimes your evening doesn’t quite work out the way you expect it would . 

John Copper Clarke

I went to see the poet and raconteur John Copper Clarke last night. 

And I kind of fell in love with fellow poet Mike Garry who was supporting him. 

They sound the same.

A thick, proud Mancunian accent. 

Nasal and rhythmical, his poems of childhood and a rough working class life in a Northern City had an obvious energy and life to them, and he lived each one with the power of an evangelist preacher.

I was captivated from start to finish, so much so that I was slightly disappointed when Cooper Clarke came on stage, late and ever so slightly drunk. 

At seventy five John Cooper Clarke is still the old king of his craft, and he performed a good selection of his poems with a wry wit which is both appealing and affectionate. But he is much more an all rounder now, more a stand up comic who hurtles one liners out like machine gun bullets rather than just a performing poet. 

I felt as though Mike Garry was his younger version 

Having said that, I remember one short poem which had the audience screaming in laughter when Cooper Clarke lugubriously threw away his short poem called Necrophilia 

“ Are you fed up with foreplay and all that palaver? 

‘Ave a cadaver” 

Cooper Clarke and Mike Garry