1.Brief
2. research and analysis
Beasley Street is a track from the 1980 album Snap, Crackle and Bop by British poet John Cooper Clarke. It was released in 1980. The poem is often set to music during live performances. The poem deals with poverty in inner-city England, where Clarke grew up.
Far from crazy pavements
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr. Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of Beasley Street
-“Silver spoons” is a reference to upper-class living; Silverware is a luxury, and this place is distant from it
-By saying Freud is obsolete, it implies that no philosophies are upheld in this place
-The legal term having no effect; Laws mean nothing
-All of this pertaining to Beasley Street
In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don’t need
A sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street
-“Cheap seats” means cheap entertainment; The inhabitants probably can afford little more than a 5$ movie
-No one gets any sleep; Sleepless nights are a sign of worry/anxiety; Since it is here “where murder breeds,” people probably don’t sleep for fear they will be the victim of a crime
-Time seems to flow quickly there because there is little to do but attempt to survive, and time passes slowly as your brain “skips” over familiar actions
Where the action isn’t
That’s where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street
-“Vacancies exist” shows that many people don’t want to live there; they’ve moved out
-X-certification is a rating for movies with explicit content. Clarke is making an analogy, that if Beasley Street were in a movie, it would bear a triple-X rating for its contents.
-There was much controversy regarding this verse, as Keith Joseph worked in the cabinet while Margaret Thatcher was in office.
-After James Callaghan devalued the British pound, Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister, and had to deal with the economic decline the devaluation created. Many people held Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet responsible, and thus Keith Joseph would not have been looked upon very highly at the time of this poem
-Keith Joseph himself has been called the “power behind the throne” in relation to Thatcher’s policies and political style. Thus, it is not surprising to see Clarke paint him with such a terrible image
From the boarding houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men’s overcoats
You can’t see their feet
A riff joint shuts opens up
Right down on Beasley Street
-Places where people are meant to live are flea-ridden, disease-filled, etc
-By “accidents” he might mean accidental children, who without loving parents, probably ran away or were put in boarding houses or bedsits
-“gets it” is slang for dies
-“Where missing persons freeze” could mean either a morgue, being where people who go missing and turn up dead would end up, or potentially the bottom of a river, which would be cold and would be the place a murderer would likely dispose of the body
-The overcoats are very long, and go past the feet of those wearing them
-“riff joint” could mean a music club, “riff” referring to a piece of music and “joint” a slang for a meeting place
Cars collide colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There’s a dead canary on a swivel seat
There’s a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code
-“Cars collide” and “disaster movie stuff” describes that car accidents are frequent, and considering the state of the place so far, they are probably due to impaired driving
-“Colours clash” could refer to either a gang war, as gangs usually choose a colour to identify themselves by, or it could refer to blood from these accidents, the red colour clashing with the black pavement
-“Fu manchu moustache” is a reference to one of his other poems, kung fu international, which describes a fight between the narrator and a man bearing a mustache of the same description
-Wikipedia states “A Fu Manchu moustache is a full, straight moustache that grows downward past the lips and on either side of the chin; and often, the tapered, pointed ends of the moustache hang past the jawline.”-“dead canary” refers to the use of canaries in coal mines. To test for carbon monoxide, and other deadly gases, the miners would carry a canary into the mines, and if it died, they knew there was a dangerous gas and that they must leave. Clarke uses it’s postion “on a swivel seat” to imply that even in the offices, where swivel seats would be found, the environment is toxic-When oils are on a flat surface, the refraction of light makes a rainbow pattern. Thus, “rainbow in the road” refers to oil or gasoline poured out on the pavement, with no one to care to clean it up-Wikipedia states “A code of silence is a condition in effect when a person opts to withhold what is believed to be vital or important information voluntarily or involuntarily. A more famous example of the code of silence is omerta, the Mafia code of silence.” If “Silence is the code” in this place, there is crime of some sort, which everyone turns a blind eye to.
Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street
-“Hot under the collar” is an idiom meaning very angry; the inspector must be shouting angrily
-The place smells terrible
–Rickets is a condition that occurs due to lack of Vitamin D or Calcium digestion. It weakens bones and muscles, and causes dental problems (which explains the “broken teeth”). Wikipedia says “Cases have been reported in Britain in recent years of rickets in children of many social backgrounds caused by insufficient production in the body of vitamin D because the sun’s ultraviolet light was not reaching the skin due to use of strong sunblock, too much “covering up” in sunlight, or not getting out into the sun.” Clarke is trying to convey that the place is so dark that even rats don’t get enough sunlight
The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing la di dah
OAP mother to be
Watch the three piece suite
When sh*t stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street
-A hipster is a person who tends to deviate from current fashion
-Yellow socks and a pink cravat are unusual forms of dress
-OAP is the Old Age Pension program offered in the UK
-“Mother-to-be” could imply underage pregnancy
The kingdom of the blind
A one eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A light bulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street
-Blindness is often a metaphor for ignorance, thus, “the kingdom of the blind” implies that the subjects in the kingdom, i.e. the people who live on Beasley Street, are ignorant of their situation and what is happening outside of it. Continuing in the analogy, they all blindy follow their “one-eyed king.” Based off of the criminal activity mentioned previously in the poem, the king is most likely some sort of crime boss.
-His one eye could further represent a war wound, which in a tribal society, which most mobs are similar to, would gain him respect. It could also be an allusions to the Norse god Odin, who was famous as the one-eyed king of the Norse pantheon, but this is less likely, as Odin is often considered wise, and the previous line would imply that wisdom is not a trait available in this place.
The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they’re not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can’t keep it neat
It’s a fully furnished dustbin
Sixteen Beasley Street
-“Boys are on the wagon” could refer to young men all needing to go to work, carpooling for cost efficiency, or as an idiom means they are absatining from alcohol
-“Girls are on the shelf” is an idiom; refers to being too old to marry
-They regret their own lives
-It’s a literally dirty place at an apartment?
Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday’s cabbage
And the ghost of last year’s wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street
People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It’s a sociologist’s paradise
Each day repeats
On easy cheesy greasy queasy
Beastly Beasley Street
-People there are terrible
-“Quick as lager turns to piss” refers to how quickly the environment of Beasley street could affect a person, as beer is very readily digested by the body
-Love can’t even survive
-Sociologists would enjoy how unchanging the place is; it would make a good control for an experiment
-Adjectives
Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street
-Deadeye refers to a cowboy that is a good shot, so the eyes dead as vicious fish good be a group of gangsters with guns looking around for something to do (namely someone to rob or intimidate)
-He wishes he could be a photograph instead of actually living there
-Monday mornings are generally regard as awful; the place always feels like that
After analyzing the poem itself, I remembered that I saw a man telling him that he listened to the CD of this song in the car one morning and shared his feelings. I want to show my book in the form of CD, a unique form and carrier. So I did research on Book Arts, and I saw a lot of very creative works of art. They are books but they are not. After I decided on the form, I also investigated some of the art designs of the CD.
3.sketches
4.Final
You can think of my works as books and installations, but I prefer to call them a group of art books. I made every section of the poem into a “CD”. It is not a real CD, but a form. It was inspired by a critic who expressed his excitement when he took out the CD when listening to the soundtrack of the poem, because Beasley street is a very excellent work. The whole CD box is made of transparent material. The CD is a black background, symbolizing the dark era. There is the poetry content of this section on the front, and the vision in it is my hand-painted illustration to understand and feel my creation through the investigation of poetry. The poetry content under the light can see the text itself and the projection of the text on the CD box at the same time. The two-layer text visual effect represents a large number of metaphorical concrete contents used by the author in poetry.