Salford icon John Cooper Clarke wants YOU to open his headline London show

Iconic Salford poet John Cooper Clarke is seeking a budding poet to open his headline show at the Hammersmith Apollo next month. Well, only if you can come up with the goods, of course.

Which is easier said than done. Clarke is offering up the opportunity-of-a-lifetime support slot to budding poets who are up for writing a riposte to his classic poem I Wanna Be Yours. He will then hand pick the winning ‘slick limerick, free verse or sonnet’.

Entries will have to be sent in by March 30, prior to the show in London on April 8. The winner will open the show, and be put up in a West End hotel for the night too. You can find out how to submit your entries here.

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In I Wanna Be Yours, also the name of both his current tour and his 2020 best-selling memoir, he famously pledged ‘Let me be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust; let me be your Ford Cortina, I will never rust’.

The poem first appeared on his 1982 album Zip Style Method, and has since taken on a life of its own, from being taught at GCSE to appearing in wedding speeches.

Clarke, now 73, is playing a string of dates across the UK, with two dates at the Bridgewater Hall on April 13 and 14, with the first date already sold out. He’ll be performing some of his most cherished work as well as new material, reading excerpts from his new book, alongside musings and anecdotes from his decades-spanning career.

Known as the ‘Bard of Salford’, he first gained notoriety in the punk scene, opening shows for legends like the Sex Pistols, the Fall, Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Elvis Costello in the late 70s and early 80s. He's