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The instant Sunday Times Bestseller

A Rough Trade Book of the Year

‘Nothing short of dazzling’ – Alex Turner, musician and frontman of the Arctic Monkeys
‘A big-hearted poet of boundless humour and unmistakable style’ – Kit Fan, Guardian

Dr John Cooper Clarke’s dazzling, scabrous voice has reverberated through pop culture for decades, his influence on generations of performance poets and musicians plain for all to see. In WHAT, the original ‘People’s Poet’ comes storming out of the gate with an uproarious collection, reminding us why he is one of Britain’s most beloved writers and performers. James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ: nobody is safe from the punk rocker’s acerbic pen – and that’s just the first poem.

Hot on the heels of The Luckiest Guy Alive and his sprawling, encyclopaediac memoir I Wanna Be Yours, the good Doctor returns with his most trenchant collection of poems yet. Vivid and alive, with a sensitivity only a writer with a life as varied and extraordinary as Cooper Clarke’s could summon, WHAT is an exceptional collection from one of our foremost satirists.

John Cooper Clarke’s book WHAT was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 05-02-2024.