Punk Poetry

Punk poetry is the performance poetry that grew up inside British punk: rapid-fire, rhyming verse delivered on rock bills and punk records, in regional accents and with comic timing, addressing working-class life, consumer culture and politics in deliberately unliterary language. Its defining figure is Salford's *John Cooper Clarke*, whose appearances opening for the *Sex Pistols* and *Buzzcocks* and records backed by *The Invisible Girls* established the template in the late 1970s. Closely related to dub poetry and the ranting-poet circuit, the form prizes delivery over pagecraft, and its cadence survives in later spoken-word and post-punk-influenced acts.