Dr John Cooper Clarke

On 24 October 2026 at Birmingham Town Hall, John Cooper Clarke takes the stage with the form that made him a fixture of the late‑70s: performance poetry delivered at speed, bone-dry and tightly rhythmic. Salford-born and shaped by the punk era, he built a voice where black humour and social observation lock to a clear beat, most often a cappella, sometimes — on record — over spare post-punk and new wave textures.

His catalogue spans the early EP Innocents and albums like Où est la maison de fromage?, Disguise in Love, Snap, Crackle & Bop and Zip Style Method. Along the way he has shared bills with Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Fall, and returned to the studio with Hugh Cornwell for This Time It’s Personal. His writing has long travelled beyond poetry circles; I Wanna Be Yours found a new life when Arctic Monkeys adapted it in 2013.

On stage today, Clarke threads poems, stories and razor-edged asides with that clipped flow and gallows humour, moving from sharp social sketches to left-field love notes. Decades in, the delivery stays lean and musical, words doing the work. This Birmingham date focuses on the craft: language, timing, punchlines and the sudden turns that keep the room leaning in.