{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''"Beasley Street"''' is a poem by the English poet John Cooper Clarke. Dealing with poverty in inner-city Salford, Cooper Clarke has said that the poem was inspired by Camp Street in Lower Broughton.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=106|title=John Cooper Clarke On Life In Higher Broughton|publisher=salfordstar.com|accessdate=4 November 2016}}</ref> It has a relentless theme of squalor and despair: <blockquote> :The rats have all got rickets :They spit through broken teeth :The name of the game is not cricket :Caught out on Beasley Street </blockquote>
The poem is similar in theme to "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" by Stephen Spender published in his ''New Collected Poems'' (1964).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92219/an-elementary-school-classroom-in-a-slum-588122c09a94b|title=An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum |author=Stephen Spender |publisher=poetryfoundation.org|accessdate=4 October 2018}}</ref>{{citation needed|date=October 2018}}
A recitation of 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."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/a-life-of-rhyme-john-cooper-clarke-the-punk-poet-laureate-grants-robert-chalmers-his-first-major-interview-in-more-than-20-years-1814712.html|title=A life of rhyme: John Cooper Clarke, the 'punk Poet Laureate'|date=8 November 2009|publisher=independent.co.uk|accessdate=4 November 2016}}</ref>
In the 2010s Cooper Clarke has performed a "sequel" poem, "Beasley Boulevard" which deals with urban regeneration and mentions Urban Splash.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/videos/2009/03/s5_e27_clarke_extra |title=John Cooper Clarke: Extra|publisher=bbc.co.uk|accessdate=4 November 2016}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://genius.com/John-cooper-clarke-beasley-street-lyrics#note-7712805 Full lyrics] at genius.com
{{John Cooper Clarke}}
Category:Punk literature Category:English poems
{{UK-poem-stub}}