Dr John Cooper Clarke

Dr John Cooper Clarke appears at The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, on 27 November 2026 for an evening of spoken word at the crossroads of punk and poetry. Born in Salford and emerging at the end of the 1970s, he shaped a stage craft built on fast delivery, dry humour and social satire, with a tight sense of rhythm often carried a cappella. Associated with the punk era yet firmly a poet of the stage, his recordings brushed against post‑punk and new wave, and he shared bills with Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Fall before teaming up with Hugh Cornwell in 2016.

On stage today, Clarke strings together quickfire poems and barbed observations, balancing bite with timing honed by years on the road. His text I Wanna Be Yours found a second life in indie rock, but it is live that his language hits hardest: lean, percussive, clear. An evening of sharp verse and clipped cadence, delivered without ornament, straight to the point.