Post-war Salford was turbulent, gritty and loud – exactly what the future ‘Bard’ of Salford needed to inspire his poetry.
“That hyper-industrialised landscape was really our manor,” says Dr John Cooper Clarke, when remembering early memories of his home city.
Cooper Clarke was born in Higher Broughton in 1949. A revered poet and comedian, he played a major role in the punk and post-punk scenes of the ‘70s and ‘80s and continues to write and tour today. His poem ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ was famously adapted into a hit song by Sheffield band, The Arctic Monkeys, which currently sits with 3.68 billion streams worldwide.
His work featured in the landmark gangster drama The Sopranos, where his poem Evidently Chickentown underscored rising tension in the show, gaining cult status and introducing the poet to new audiences worldwide.
He has won awards like ‘The Freedom of the City of Salford’ and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford in 2013. Salford Mayor Paul Dennett has praised his “unique pin-sharp literary talent” alongside several others who hail him as an icon not just in Salford but throughout the country.
Looking back on his success – playing bills alongside bands like the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays and The Fall – Cooper Clarke expresses pride in his “rags to riches story.”
That story began growing up in a humble apartment above a pharmacy in a “dilapidated regency block.” It was “like something from the Addams family” or the sort where you wouldn’t be surprised to see “Gargoyles on the stairs.”
Salford, at the time, was in a transition away from the heavy-industrial chimneys which were blazoned across the skyline. Some were demolished, yet some, commonly at the time, were abandoned. “Kids didn’t really like the countryside back then”, he said, “We liked messing around in disused factories.”
The sound of the city never really stopped in his childhood home, which sat close to the busy crossroads between Great Cheetham Street and Bury New Road. “My Dad couldn’t sleep if he went to the countryside… he couldn’t sleep without the constant hum of traffic.”
Cooper Clarke’s first job in Salford and his first experience in the “miseries of redundancy” came as a bookies runner at the age of 12. In a time before betting was legalised nationwide, he was making great money for his age: “I was pissing pure gold – unbelievable money for a 12-year-old.” But this did not last long – “Thank you very much Harold Macmillan and your government. They legalised off-track betting,” he remarked. “No twelve-year-old should’ve had the money I had then.”
Horse-racing culture was a major part of Salford’s identity: “The first thing I think of when I think of Salford would be the horse racing, funnily enough,” he told Salford Now.
Cooper Clarke’s youth life was inevitably moulded by subcultures: “Me and my friends were all ‘muds’ in leather jackets. It was Greaser City.”
“We were always under the cosh… always avoiding getting pasted.”
Yet it’s this era of change and instability alongside a strong, tethered community which heavily influenced some of his most renowned pieces.
“There was this frisson between the faded grandeur of the place where I lived and the poverty of the general neighbourhood.”
Despite the “chaos” of the city, Cooper Clarke is undeniably proud of the place he grew up: “I’d be much more ashamed coming from a posh area than coming from Salford.”
Some of his most respected pieces, like Beasley Street, were written directly about Salford’s cobbles. His famous poem, which talks of the drink culture and concentrated poverty, was based on Camp Street, located between Higher and Lower Broughton.
He explained that whilst he used Salford as an inspiration, he wrote it for everybody: “I tried to make it international… everywhere has streets like that.”
Cooper Clarke believes the city’s cultural influence is often overlooked: “It’s punched above its weight really.” He cited some of his favourite notable figures across the landscape, such as Albert Finney, Sheila Delaney and Mike Leigh. He described the Rialto Cinema in Salford as a major inspiration, “Mike Leigh called it his ‘cinema school’”, he explained.
Although Cooper Clarke was amongst the changing landscape, surrounded by constant inspiration and changing tides, he was inspired to create poetry by a teacher at St Andrews RC Secondary Modern, Mr Malone. Although he only taught for a brief period of time, Clarke praised Malone’s ability to make poetry accessible and unpretentious: “Some of the tough guys you wouldn’t imagine liking poetry, he made them have it.”
“That’s when it all started, when I was thirteen… I quickly found I had the knack for it.”
Many voices cite John Cooper Clarke as one of the major figures in bringing poetry back to the working class – Langworthy-born Christopher Eccleston said that Cooper Clarke“changed his life” while Cllr John Warmisham said: “He brought poetry back to the working classes.” 70 years ago, however, it was unrealistic to believe one could make a living from writing poetry: even his dad said, as Clarke described, “You know, you’re never going to make any money out of that.”
But there’s something strange about Salford in that it seems to create some of the most important art worldwide again and again. Perhaps Salford is a poetic place, or perhaps, it’s just brutally confident.
John Cooper Clarke undoubtedly deserves to sit amongst his fellow Salford greats. John Warmisham described ‘Beasley Street’ as “A Lowry painting in words.”
And although Salford was only crowned a city 100 years ago, for many (including Cooper Clarke himself) it has had the prestige of a city for much longer: “Honestly, this is a school day for me… I had no idea it was such a young city… I would’ve said it was a city for centuries.”
In the words of Dr John Cooper Clarke, regarding Salford’s future: “The only way is up. It’s got a higher profile than it ever had.”
