Grandma Smith and Grandpa Cooper Clarke: Investigating the godparents of punk poetry: Patti Smith and John Cooper Clarke

It is often said (on the backs of books, or on the internet – so it must be true) that Patti Smith is the godmother of punk poetry and John Cooper Clarke the godfather. In this paper I want to investigate what it is about their literature that we can read in relation to Punk as a philosophy, aesthetic and cultural movement and all the other adjectives we might associate with the term. However, I won’t only be considering poetry, in fact, following the success of her biographies, I will also be considering Patti Smith’s prose work (so I am not sticking to the rules at a punk conference, is this a surprise to anyone?). Another aspect of this paper is to explore the recent popularity of both of these artists/writers/musicians – whose careers each span each of these titles, and to think about how we can understand and interpret that in relation to our considerations of all things punk today. Therefore, I hope to address the issue as to the notion of inspiration (hence godparent) versus influence/heritage (thus grandparent).