I don't know about clisp, but this is what I have for SBCL. This co-exists with my clojure swank setup as well. I don't use ELPA and instead have a completely manual setup.
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/src/slime")
(require 'slime)
(add-to-list 'slime-lisp-implementations '(sbcl ("/usr/local/bin/sbcl")))
(setq slime-default-lisp 'sbcl)
I have a hand compiled SBCL. I see a swank backend for CLISP in the SLIME CVS codebase, so I guess, changing slime-default-lisp and slime-lisp-implementations to clisp probably will just work.
lein swank mainly exists for starting swank port on a particular project. This is needed because JVM classpaths cannot be modified at runtime. So, we start java with classpaths set to our project directories and dependencies using lein swank or swank-clojure-project. With CL, this is not necessary, as pathnames can be modified during runtime.
I have posted the complete config file at: http://github.com/vu3rdd/dotfiles
I will be glad to help setting up a fully manual emacs/slime/swank setup.