John Cooper Clarke

The '80s were a lost decade.

I'm not much of a team player when it comes to making records, I've got to say.

From social pariah to King of the World? It's taken 45 years, so I've been able to adjust to it!

There is a certain sentimental vibe in my home town of Manchester, which you would sort of expect.

When you're doing poetry like mine that rhymes, it's very easy to sound like a song that didn't work out!

You know how the Marvel Comics superheroes formed themselves into the Justice League of America - Batman, Flash and the rest. Why did Superman join? He never needed any help.

It amazes me there are movies about writers... such inert, uneventful lives.

My favourite writers are columnists.

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

I love singing. I'm a great singer.

Well, I've obviously been a great source of inspiration to the academic population of Salford! They're citing me as a major contribution to their upward trajectory!

I don't work with anybody I don't like, just for the attention.

I've had a few jobs, but if you want to be a writer, you're better off getting a job that doesn't require that you do anything.

The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.

All the best musicians started out in church; Jesus invented rock 'n' roll.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.

I wanted to get rich, like anyone from my background.

I got to play The Vortex in London with the Buzzcocks, the Fall, me and Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers. That was a serious Manchester night.

My look was based on the Madison Avenue guy who's just lost his job. Ivy League suit a bit scuzzed up, an outgrown layer cut and five o'clock shadow.

I've been kept from honest employment for a long, long time now. Thank God!

Being unapologetic means never having to say you're sorry.

If I'd have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.

By the '80s, anything to do with punk was perceived as rancid. Me being known as the 'punk poet' meant my work and I plummeted.

I'm not fond of crowds. I'm no jittery neurotic, but I don't really want to be surrounded by a lot of people if I have a choice.

Fame just ain't a natural situation. But I shouldn't have worried because everyone thought I was a bit famous even before I'd done anything; people just assumed I was famous.

I enjoy gigging in industrial towns. It seems to be where I go down the best. Somewhere where they have a history of manufacturing, they're my favourite places to play.

I love being in a car.

Lyrics became important for a while in the late Seventies. Patti Smith was a poet and a rock star, as much one as the other, the distinctions were a bit blurred and then you get swept up in it. Punk poet, it's a good enough term.

At the beginning, there was no chance I'd get published so I thought I'd give it a go live. I had to perform in rock band places and working men's clubs, where you wouldn't expect to find poetry. I ploughed a lonely furrow.

I eat like a pig. Tripe is the only thing I won't eat.

Doris Day was the perfect woman.

I crack myself up. Even I don't know what I'm going to say next.

I don't have secrets, my life's an open book.

My declining allure is a source of great sadness to me.

The main thing a poem ought to be is musical. It should be rhythmic. You should hear it as a musical piece in your head as you're writing it.

Me, I listen to all kinds of music, really.

They're very different things, a poem and a song, you wouldn't think they would be, but they are.

I went to what can only be described as a slum school in Salford - rough and full of trainee punks - but I was very lucky in that I had one inspiring teacher, John Malone, who gave the whole class an interest in romantic poetry.

Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.

I'm a great reader of credits; I never leave the cinema before they finish.

There've been lots of positive changes in the city since I worked at Salford Tech in the seventies, and I'm pleased to be known as Salford's Bard and to have helped put it on the map.

Too many memoirs focus on childhoods and it's a bit turgid.

I love the Arctic Monkeys!

Most cities are the same.

I'm not giving away sartorial secrets but the trousers I wear cost 19 quid.

I've always lived all over the place, and left Manchester the minute I was old enough to steal a car.

Maybe there are luckier people than me, but I don't know who that would be. I feel pretty lucky. I've had a nice life - I don't know how I could be luckier.

Idleness - a job that you have to go to, but not necessarily do anything - is the poet's friend.

You can always find something better to do than writing when you're at home.