John Cooper Clarke playing North American shows this fall

Punk poet, actor and musician John Cooper Clarke will be heading to North America this fall for select shows in support of his 2020 memoir I Wanna Be Yours. So far there have been three shows announced: Boston’s City Winery on October 5, NYC’s Town Hall on October 7, and Toronto’s Lee’s Palace on October 9. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 11 at 10 AM local time.

Here’s more on I Wanna Be Yours: “Poet Laureate of Punk, rock star, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator. At 5’11” (116lb, 32in chest, 27in waist), in trademark suit jacket, skin-tight drainpipes and dark glasses, with jet-black back-combed hair and mouth full of gold teeth, John Cooper Clarke is instantly recognizable. As a writer his voice is equally unmistakable. This memoir covers an extraordinary life, filled with remarkable personalities: from Nico to Chuck Berry, from all the great punks to Bernard Manning, and on to more recent fans and collaborators Alex Turner and Plan B. John also reveals his boggling encyclopaedic knowledge of 20th-century popular culture, from Baudelaire to Coronation Street. Inimitable and iconic, his book will be a joy for lifelong fans and for a whole new generation.”

Watch a few performance videos of JCC, including his classics “Evidently Chickentown” and “I Wanna Be Yours,” which Arctic Monkeys covered on their album AM, below.