Poems
Poem 2: 'i wanna be yours'
Extract
let me be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
let me be your ford cortina
i will never rust
The Poet: John Cooper Clarke (1948-)
John Cooper Clarke was born in Salford, Lancashire in 1948. He left school at 16 to train as a motor mechanic. He subsequently worked as an apprentice cutter in a coat factory, and as an MC in a Manchester nightclub before coming to national fame as a performance poet in the punk movement of the late 1970s, reading his poems on the same bill as punk bands like the Buzzcocks and the Fall. He has continued to make his living as a recording artist and gigging poet, and is something of a national icon. His poetry is a modern take on the tradition of comic verse monologues by music-hall artists and comperes such as Stanley Holloway and Max Miller.
The Poem
Instead of having a publisher as most poets do, Cooper Clarke is signed to a record label. The printed poem 'i wanna be yours' is more a blueprint for performance than a fixed text. This is evident from the changes he has continued to make to his poems as he performs them. The printed version of 'i wanna be yours' has 'let me be your ford cortina', whereas Cooper Clarke now reads, 'let me be your morris marina', because in performance he has found it to be funnier.
'i wanna be yours' is read fast, with hardly room to take a breath. The music of the syllables in a Cooper Clarke poem is reminiscent of drum patterns. Another of the changes to the printed text of the poem is from 'let me be the electric heater / you get cold without' to 'let me be the electric heater / you get pneumonia without'. Try saying the two out loud and beating the syllables with your fingers and you'll understand why he wanted to change it, 'because it was too easy'.
The litany of household objects he wants to be, to get closer to his beloved - 'raincoat', 'vacuum cleaner', 'setting lotion' - sets off pictures in the mind that conflict hilariously with conventional images of love. Similarly the rhymes seem to both pay tribute to and poke fun at the simple or simplistic rhymes of popular song - 'let me be your teddy bear / take me with you anywhere / i don't care'. When you hear or read 'i wanna be yours' you can't help but hear in your mind the talk, applause and laughter of the audience.
What John Cooper Clarke Said
'It's one of a classic style of love poem, love song, in which the writer expresses his desire to be useful to the object of his desire.
'If you point out that somebody drives a Ford Cortina, you're talking about the sort of person that is... a Morris Marina is just a mid-range Uncle Jimmy type automobile with no cultural baggage at all apart from its sheer lack of class.'
John Cooper Clarke - Passwords 1998
© 2000 Channel Four Television Corporation
