• John Cooper Clarke @ Ulster Hall, Belfast

    “It’s let’s see who’s still alive in Belfast night”, the fifty-something-year-old man said, entering the foyer of the Ulster Hall. For the city’s former punks any gig by the movement’s old guard is reason to turn out, even it if is for a poetry night. John Cooper Clarke, to be fair, is no ordinary poet. Since the 1970s, Salford’s punk-poet extraordinaire has surfed the highs and lows of an unfashionable business, rhyming and riffing on everything from sperm tests and inner-city poverty to the crumbling NHS, metrosexuals and Bono’s stolen trousers. At seventy, this great satirist is perhaps more relevant…

  • John Cooper Clarke w/ Mike Garry @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    There’s a fairly wide range of punters in Whelans tonight. Some of them are aged punks who are still rocking questionable facial hair and fashion choices after so many years. Some are young hipsters rocking questionable facial hair and fashion choices after far fewer years. Many are just average folk, coming from work ready to experience the sermon. Regardless of who they are and where they come from, they’re all here to hear the message delivered from on a slightly higher stage by the legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Whelans is decked out with chairs, but it’s clear that…

  • Playlist: National Poetry Day

    We’re humongous fans of poetry here at The Thin Air. As far as we’re concerned, the very best poetry is far superior to a very good song or album – the syllabic genius of a handful of rhyming conquistadors down the ages faring in a realm of incisive mastery that has little to no parallel in any other sphere of the arts. As it so happens, today is National Poetry Day and as we are also humongous fans of lovingly-assembled Spotify playlists of pretty much anything under the recordable sun, we have compiled a fifteen-track playlist of poetry (and music containing…