i wanna be yours — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
i wanna be yours
The poems
What you need to know
The speaker offers to become a string of everyday objects, from a vacuum cleaner to a coffee pot, to show how completely he wants to belong to the person he loves.
How Clarke's household objects and car make a funny, unromantic and sincere declaration of devotion, and how repetition builds to the depth of his emotion.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'let me be your vacuum cleaner', 'breathing in your dust', 'let me be your ford cortina / i will never rust', 'if you like your coffee hot / let me be your coffee pot', 'you call the shots', 'let me be your teddy bear', 'i will not run out', 'deep as the deep / atlantic ocean', 'that's how deep is my emotion', 'i don't wanna be hers'.
Form: three stanzas of short lines with no capitals or punctuation, the anaphora of let me be your, rhyme and repetition like a song, and the refrain that closes each stanza.
Context: John Cooper Clarke (born 1949), the punk poet from Salford who performed alongside punk bands in the late 1970s; the poem's release on his album Zip Style Method and its 2013 adaptation by Arctic Monkeys; and its place as a favourite wedding reading.
Compares well with: Valentine (everyday objects as symbols of love), Sonnet 43 (lists of devotion), Love's Dog (repetition and list form) and 1st Date – She and 1st Date – He (comic modern love).
