John Cooper Clarke will be releasing a retrospective Anthologia, described as the first anthology of his work, later this month. The three CD/DVD collection includes classics such as ‘Evidently Chickentown’, live performances from the Manchester Ritz and Hulme Hippodrome, plus previously unseen footage dating back to the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test programme in 1978.

In an interview in the latest edition of The Big Issue, the bard of Salford said: “I was never encouraged to be creative. But we had an inspiring literature teacher called John Malone, who was a rugged outdoors type but had a weakness for 19th century romantic verse, which he conveyed to a class of hormonal tough nuts. It’s how I imagine the rap scene started – we were trying to outsmart each other with million dollar words from the dictionary.”

In the interview he adds: “You need routine in your life to write properly. I’d like to say that I walk around with a butterfly net to capture inspiration but that is for amateurs. There were years when I didn’t do any poetry.  Now I am very prolific. I work office hours, plain and simple. A retrospective of my work was bound to happen because of the resurgence of interest in my oeuvre.”

Cooper Clarke will be appearing on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Radcliffe and Maconie programme on National Poetry Day, Thursday 8 October, at 1pm along with Jo Bell.