Modern Love & Humour
Modern Love & Everyday Voices
Not all love poetry is serious or tragic. Three contemporary poems in the Relationships collection use humour, pop culture and everyday language to explore love in ways that feel immediate and accessible: Wendy Cope’s paired poems “1st Date — She” and “1st Date — He,” John Cooper Clarke’s “i wanna be yours” and Jen Hadfield’s “Love’s Dog.” These poems offer a refreshing contrast to the Romantic and literary heritage poems in the collection, and they are excellent choices for comparison because their modern methods stand out against older traditions.
1st Date — She & 1st Date — He — Wendy Cope (2011)
Cope (born 1945) is known for witty, accessible poetry that often satirises literary conventions. These paired poems give both sides of a first date: “She” presents the woman’s nervous inner monologue, “He” presents the man’s. Cope treats them as a single poem (they are listed together in the anthology), and the humour comes from recognising the universal anxiety and self-consciousness of meeting someone new.
The poem’s dual perspective structure is its most distinctive feature. By placing “She” and “He” side by side, Cope reveals both the similarities (both are nervous, both want to impress) and the differences (gendered anxieties about appearance, conversation, physical attraction) between men and women approaching the same moment.
Key language: Both speakers use a colloquial register — the inner monologue sounds like real thought, not crafted poetry. “She” worries about whether her outfit works, whether she’s talking too much, whether he’ll call again. “He” worries about whether she finds him attractive, whether he’s being funny enough. The conversational tone makes both speakers endearing and relatable — the reader recognises their own nervousness.
Key structure: Both poems use short lines, simple vocabulary and a loose structure that mimics the jumpy, fragmented quality of anxious thought. The lack of a regular rhyme scheme or metre reflects the unpredictability of a first date — neither speaker knows what will happen next. The paired format (two poems read together) is structurally unique in the anthology and invites comparison in itself.
i wanna be yours — John Cooper Clarke (1982)
Cooper Clarke (born 1949) is a “punk poet” from Salford, Greater Manchester, who performed his poetry alongside punk bands in the late 1970s. “i wanna be yours” was written to be spoken aloud, not read silently on a page. The poem was set to music by the Arctic Monkeys in 2013, introducing it to a new generation. The title’s deliberate lack of capitalisation and use of “wanna” signals its anti-establishment attitude from the start.
Cooper Clarke replaces traditional poetic imagery (roses, stars, moonlight) with deliberately mundane domestic objects: “I wanna be your vacuum cleaner / breathing in your dust.” He offers to be a Ford Cortina, a raincoat, an electric heater, a coffee pot. These objects are functional, unglamorous and everyday — the opposite of Romantic idealism. Yet this is precisely the point: the speaker is not offering grand gestures but total, practical devotion. He wants to be useful, warm, reliable — to serve the beloved in the most ordinary ways possible. This makes the love feel more genuine than any sonnet’s declarations.
Key language: “I wanna be your electric meter / I will not run out” — the promise “I will not run out” is the poem’s emotional core, cutting through the humour with a sincere pledge of constancy. The anaphora of “I wanna be your” creates a hypnotic, chant-like rhythm suited to performance. The refrain “I wanna be yours” shifts from comic to genuinely moving through repetition — what starts as a joke becomes an earnest declaration.
Key structure: The poem has no punctuation and minimal capitalisation, reflecting its punk, anti-establishment origins and its performance roots. The regular stanza pattern and relentless anaphora give it a song-like quality — it was always meant to be heard, not just read. The deliberate rejection of “literary” language is itself a statement about who gets to write love poetry and in what voice.
Love’s Dog — Jen Hadfield (2012)
Hadfield (born 1978) grew up in Cheshire and has lived for years on the Shetland Islands. “Love’s Dog” presents love as a contradictory, unpredictable companion — like a dog that can be both loyal and wild, comforting and maddening. The poem takes its title from the idea that love follows us around, sometimes wanted, sometimes not.
Key language: The poem is built around a series of oxymorons and contradictions: “What I love about love is its / What I hate about love is its.” Most couplets pair something loved with something hated, but some pair two loves or two hates, which keeps the reader off balance. Love is presented as inherently dual — it cannot exist without its opposite. The parallel structure (“What I love… What I hate…”) creates a see-sawing rhythm that mirrors the emotional ups and downs of being in love.
Hadfield presents love as fundamentally paradoxical — you cannot have the joy without the pain, the excitement without the anxiety, the closeness without the vulnerability. The poem refuses to simplify love into either a positive or negative experience, making it one of the most honest and psychologically complex poems in the collection.
The title “Love’s Dog” is a metaphor in itself. A dog is loyal but unpredictable, affectionate but capable of biting, always following you whether you want it to or not. Love, Hadfield suggests, is the same — it is not something you can fully control. The alternating love/hate structure across the poem mirrors the unpredictable behaviour of a dog that might lick your face one moment and chew your shoes the next. The structural tension between the rigid parallel pattern and the wild, surprising content within each line embodies this perfectly: love has a pattern, but it constantly surprises you.
Comparing the Three Poems
Contemporary voices: All three poems reject the elevated diction and formal structures of the Romantic and literary heritage poems. Cope uses colloquial inner monologue, Cooper Clarke uses punk-influenced domestic imagery, and Hadfield uses philosophical paradox. Each finds a fresh way to write about love without relying on centuries-old conventions.
Humour and honesty: All three poems are funny, but the humour serves a serious purpose. Cope’s humour reveals the universal vulnerability of new love. Cooper Clarke’s humour disguises a sincere pledge of devotion. Hadfield’s humour highlights the contradictions of love. In each case, humour makes the emotional truth more convincing, not less.