Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today knew even as a teenager that the one thing he wanted to do was make a living from writing poetry.

For a young lad from a tough neighbourhood in industrial Manchester, that was an unlikely calling.

But John Cooper Clark did indeed have an extraordinary gift for words,

and some six decades later, he can lay claim to be one of the most popular poets in the English language today.

In the early days, he made his name reading his own poetry and working men's clubs.

His gift for live performance got him into the 1970s punk rock scene. And with his stick-thin appearance, black thatch of hair

and deathly pallor, he became a cult figure, the punk poet. He wrote of the chaos of everyday life

with sardonic humour. He used rhythm and rhyme

to tell stories pulsing with energy and wit. Then he got into drugs. For a decade his life

was a mess, but he emerged with his gift intact and a new audience, not just in Britain,

but around the world, eager to hear his distinctive

Manchester voice. Thanks to the band The Arctic Monkeys, one of his poems, I Wanna Be Yours, became a

worldwide hit. It's been streamed more than a billion times. Never mind Shakespeare,

Wordsworth or Tennyson John Cooper Clark can right now lay claim to have written the world's favorite English language poem. So where does his word magic come from? Well, he joins me now. John Cooper Clark, welcome to Hard Talk. Hello, Stephen. It's great to have you here. John, I just read your memoir, and one of the first sentences in it is this one.

All my life, all I ever wanted to be, was a professional poet.

Now, I've heard of kids who want to be train drivers, professional footballers,

but very rare to find a kid who always knew he wanted to be a poet.

How come?

Well, when I say always, I guess from the age of 12, I became enamoured of poetry,

thanks to an inspirational teacher, Mr Malone, John Malone.

Although he was a rugged outdoor sporty type of guy,

...