A unique and idiosyncratic talent, John Cooper Clarke remains relatively niche in North America. Hailing from Salford, England, the man nicknamed “the People’s Poet” and “the Doctor” has, over the last forty years, honed a style of performative poetry that contains equal doses of wit, elegance, and hilarity. In the late 1970s, Clarke established himself as a local hero within the punk scene, opening for bands like Joy Division and Buzzcocks at venues like the Electric Circus. In his live performances, he cultivated a rapport with his audience strong enough to carry him through a decade-long creative drought. During the 1980s, Clarke became addicted to heroin (or, as he describes it, he fell ill to an “idleness”).

He’s been clean since the ’90s, and ever since the turn of the century, he’s received renewed reverence from all over the pop-culture landscape. Both the multi-hyphenate artist Plan B and Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys have named him as a major influence, and The Sopranos featured his track “Evidently Chickentown” in an unforgettable closing scene. Perhaps most symbolic of all, though, was the inclusion, in 2002, of one of his poems on the curriculum for the General Certificate of Secondary Education exam, which is administered in parts of the UK, to which he reacted by saying: “It’s an honor to know that my work is getting shoved down the throats of unwilling pupils across the country.”