Adrian Shephard meets John Cooper Clarke in Berlin

haiku talk, haiku readings, poetry and magic, poetry talk,

“a gift that sharpened into a skill,”

indolence talk, professional poet, Charles Baudelaire, Pam Ayres talk, BBC televsion talk,

“We’d never run out of conversation, Pam and I”

adverts talk, massive flat fee and being treated like a king, how to become a star in a commercial, sugar puffs, “pure energy in a box”

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deflowerment talk, machine gun poetry and the erogenous effect, punk days talk, Howard Devoto talk and how JCC became a poet among punks, the glorious two punk years, “no flares and no beards,” Linder Sterling, Howard Devoto’s girlfriend,

“just from the look of it, I wanted to get involved,”

stationary questions, time travel questions, 1965 talk, cassette question, Elvis,

“I’ve got a ghetto blaster in every room,”

“my poetry gets rammed down the reluctant throats of school children,”

Ends interview with the story of a dream starring Dion Dimucci, answering fanmail and reading a classic poem.

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“It’s a hire car, baby”

 

Book out: The Luckiest Guy Alive published by Picador Books

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