Have It by John Cooper Clarke (Picador, £16.99)
The latest collection from the original “people’s poet” displays his characteristic swagger, delivered with a distinctively northern humour. Merging blistering social satire and brash wit, Cooper Clarke irreverently tackles themes from the ridiculous to the sublime, including the malaise of contemporary urban life, the erosion of nature and the environment, money and the prospect of a cashless society, death and ageing, fascism, bachelorhood, popular culture and the NHS. His punk rock values caustically underpin the collection: “Me and my shrinking crowd / Each under our own personal cloud”; “We wish you no serious harm/ However, everybody sucks but us”. There’s heavy use of doggerel and jokes as he stridently proclaims his passion for writing. “It’s a meaningless job but someone’s got to do it / Thank God it’s me”. Overall, Cooper Clarke’s consummate performance skills in playing to the crowd demand applause as he advocates for the “blood royal of the working class”.
The Dodo Stories by Mary Mulholland (Nine Arches, £11.99)
Mulholland’s compelling debut collection explores complex questions of inheritance, migration and colonialism. “i go to the old country we’re from, / long to belong, to be like that fennel-lapping lizard in funchal”. She delves into personal and public archives, memory, dreams and the unconscious to uncover her family histories, stretching back to her great grandparents and the silenced stories of Portuguese indenture to the Caribbean. Her descriptions of wildlife and landscapes are skilfully rendered: “the three-night flower smells of pineapple and banana, scarab beetles hurry to the feast and stay like lovers”; “purpleheart, greenheart, spiny fiddleheart, and palms that walk by themselves, shift-shape”. At the heart of this richly evocative book is a moving tribute to her “exotic morpho mother”, the eponymous Dodo, and a desire for healing from the effects of intergenerational trauma. “May she receive this / benediction, an invocation to wish her well”.
