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.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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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?"