Poetry legend John Cooper Clarke was on the BBC this morning (Radio 4) - back out there performing regularly, after years of silence. This is very good news. Clarke is a major talent and an influence on witty performance-interested poets like Luke Wright and Tim Wells today. A dream: to have him appear for the Oxfam series. I am working on it.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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Thousands turned up to watch him at the Latitude poetry tent, all standing, crammed together with the front row dry humping the stage.
Luckily, he only turned up twenty minutes late this time and Luke Wright and Byron Vincent were on hand to keep the hordes entertained.
It was a magic night for poetry, preceded by the obligatory backstage chorus of "Where the f*** is he?"