Beasley Street


"Beasley Street" is one of the many notable works by punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Dealing with poverty in inner-city Salford in the Britain of Margaret Thatcher, Cooper Clarke has said that the poem was inspired by Camp Street in Lower Broughton. It has a relentless theme of squalor and despair:


The poem is similar in theme to "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" by Stephen Spender published in his New Collected Poems.
The poem appears on Cooper Clarke's 1980 album Snap, Crackle & Bop. When it was released, BBC radio stations censored the line "Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies/ In a box on Beasley Street."
In the 2010s Cooper Clarke has performed a "sequel" poem, "Beasley Boulevard" which deals with urban regeneration and mentions Urban Splash.