Dr John Cooper Clarke

On 25 November 2026, John Cooper Clarke brings his quickfire performance poetry to De Montfort Hall in Leicester. Born in Salford and forged on the late‑70s punk circuit, Clarke made his name with a delivery that snaps into meter, dark humour and sharp social detail. Often a cappella, sometimes riding sparse post‑punk backdrops on record, his work sits at the crossroads of spoken word and rock culture. He shared stages early on with Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Fall, cut a run of albums that set his cadence in stone, and later returned to the studio with Hugh Cornwell. His writing also slipped into the mainstream when Arctic Monkeys adapted I Wanna Be Yours.

On stage today, Clarke keeps the line tight and the punchlines clean, folding love poems, street pieces and barbed portraits into a set shaped by rhythm and breath. Expect dense internal rhymes, sideways gags and that clipped Northern timing, with newer texts threaded alongside long‑standing favourites. It’s poetry delivered like a setlist, where the beat is in the voice and the music is in the language—stripped back, audible, and built for a big room like De Montfort Hall.