Beasley Street

"Beasley Street" is one of the many notable works by punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Dealing with poverty in inner-city Salford in the Britain of Margaret Thatcher, Cooper Clarke has said that the poem was inspired by Camp Street in Lower Broughton.[1] It has a relentless theme of squalor and despair:

The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street

The poem is similar in theme to "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" by Stephen Spender published in his New Collected Poems (1964).[2]

The poem appears on Cooper Clarke's 1980 album Snap, Crackle & Bop. When it was released, BBC radio stations censored the line "Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies/ In a box on Beasley Street."[3]

In the 2010s Cooper Clarke has performed a "sequel" poem, "Beasley Boulevard" which deals with urban regeneration and mentions Urban Splash.[4]

References
  1. "John Cooper Clarke On Life In Higher Broughton". salfordstar.com. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  2. Stephen Spender. "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum". poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  3. "A life of rhyme: John Cooper Clarke, the 'punk Poet Laureate'". independent.co.uk. 8 November 2009. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  4. "John Cooper Clarke: Extra". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
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