Poem

On World Poetry Day, ‘A Cockroach Walks into a Bar’ by Steven Bruce

When did you last read poetry with grit, with blood, violence and drugs and all the glorious ways the working class have to live to survive. I don’t know whether things are getting better or worse for working class poets. On the one hand, Culture Matters is doing well, providing a political and social home for working class culture and ideas. But then, Smokestack Books is no more, though the back catalogue Andy Croft amassed is still available and immense, in what it achieved in its twenty plus years. Andy Croft gave me that chance back in 2016 when he told me he would publish my debut collection ‘Precarious’ in 2018.

But not all hope is lost. Publishers like Broken Sleep Books, Bad Betty Press, are giving opportunities to working class writers. Though they have both recently lost continued Arts Council funding, and have relied on crowd funding. Other mainstream poetry publishers, like Carcanet, Bloodaxe, are National Portfolio Organisation (NPOs) so are more stable and within their catalogue there are some working class voices.

In grit you know in the first lines of the poem that the poet has/ does live that life. Standout poets such as this include Caleb Femi, Bobby Parker, Anna Robinson, Casey Bailey, Martin Hayes, Melissa Lee Houghton, or Helen Mort.

I was introduced to today’s poet, Steven Bruce by my friend Martin Hayes. Like Martin, Bruce tells of the everyday life of people who struggle with the written and unwritten rules they have to navigate.

His collection, Brute (out with 1987 books) will have you spitting out the grit within each line and poem. Dedicated to the ‘bruised, the burning, and the ones still trying’. It is not an easy read, and nor should it be. In a time of late capitalism that is reducing us all to individual public limited companies. What’s your product? What’s its worth?

Steven Bruce is an award-winning author whose poetry and short stories have appeared in international anthologies and magazines. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University and explores themes of trauma, survival, and the human condition. Born in England, he now writes full-time in Poland.

You can buy a copy of ‘Brute’ from 1987 Books, here.

Martin Hayes says, ‘I haven’t read anyone who has ever made sadness and the shit we have to go through, feel this good.’

A Cockroach Walks into a Bar by Steven Bruce

A cockroach walks into a bar
lit by a chandelier of dog teeth.
The bartender,
a fat roach with one eye,
pulls him a pint.

On the television,
a man in a suit signs a paper
that means bombs for children.

The roach watches in silence.

Jesus, one mutters,
How do they always find
new ways to destroy themselves?

The roach sips his beer
from a rusted thimble,
thinking of the time
he saw a man
kick a dog
for begging.

Call us vermin, the bartender says,
but we don’t poison the rivers.
We don’t bury children in rubble.

The bartender changes channels
wipes his mandibles,
and says, Soon,
they’ll wipe themselves out.

And when the last man dies
with a flag in his mouth
and a banknote in each fist,
we’ll crawl out into the silence
and have our day.

An Ghaeltacht by Cathy Galvin

If we think about the classes according to their mobility, we see the working class far more ‘on the move’ to find work and a place to live. Whereas with the middle classes, mobility is more one of professional development. Essentially, one driver of mobility is necessity/ survival, whilst the other is much more positive, with higher status, wages, etc..

We have addressed this issue before on Proletarian Poetry, for example most poignantly with Micheal Gallagher’s ‘Paraic and Jack and John from 2016,

Goodbyes to
the mothers, always the mothers,
the father-mother-farmer mothers,
the savers of hay,
the spreaders of turf;
brought into heat once, maybe twice,
a year, migrant’s return, marital duties,
children’s allowances, God’s word –
stuff like that.

In Cathy Galvin’s brilliant debut collection Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara published by Bloodaxe Books, she portrays the impact of migrancy, both inward and outward. From Coventry like myself, her Irish roots are in the far west of Ireland in Connemara. In my own area of Coventry, a large Irish community settled in Coundon from the 1950s – so many that it became dubbed County Coundon; though there are a number of other areas where Irish families settled in the city. I have friends whose parents came from Donegal, Cork, Mayo, Galway. They came to rebuild Coventry from the Blitz but also to work in the car factories.

But things have changed a lot in the last twenty six years. Helped by its own success then boosted by the UK leaving the EU, Ireland is now a place people migrate to, or return to. More people have returned to Ireland now than left, with the population rising from 4 million in 2000 to 5.4 million in 2025

Cathy has written a beautiful paean to her Irish roots in Connemara and Coventry. She notes this change of inward migration in the featured poem ‘An Ghaeltacht’ which refers to recognised regions of Ireland where Irish is the predominant language. Cathy is a poet, journalist and literary entrepreneur being Founder and Director of The Word Factory,

You can buy a copy of Ethnology here

An Ghaeltacht

Paul – Pól – bought himself a boat
and a house. Took land on the island,
drove through mountains on a motorbike.
But these people with the same name as him,
the same DNA, drinking in the same bar,
kept themselves to themselves.
Gave him no work. And in Galway –
Well you might as well be back in Croydon, he said
All those East Europeans, no one speaking English.
He keeps his curtains drawn, gate padlocked.
I’m told he’s packing his bags. Taking
his estuary English over to Durham
where houses are also cheap. In time, it’s possible
they tell me, he might even pick up the language.

‘The Machines Mourn the Passing of People’ by A.E. Stallings to mark the first anniversary of the passing of Fred Voss

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of Fred Voss (you can read my obituary here). I am very grateful to Professor A.E. Stallings for giving permission to publish her poem, ‘The Machines Mourn the Passing of People, to honour Fred.’ When I read this poem just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t quite believe how pertinent and poignant the poem is. It addresses the end of work, but instead of the redundancy of the worker, Stallings speaks of the machines. The poem is taken from her Selected Poems: This Afterlife, published by Carcanet.

The poem is dedicated to Fred’s partner, the poet Joan Jobe Smith.

The Machines Mourn the Passing of People

We miss the warmth of their clumsy hands,
The oil of their fingers, the cleansing of use
That warded off dust, and the warm abuse
Lavished upon us as reprimands.

We were kicked like dogs when we were broken,
But we did not whimper. We gritted our cogs–
An honor it was to be treated like dogs
To incur such warm words roughly spoken,

The way that they pleaded with us if we balked –
‘Come on, Come on,’ in a hoarse whisper
As they would urge a reluctant lover–
The feel of their warm breath when they talked!

How could we guess they would ever be gone?
We are shorn now of tasks, and the lovely work –
Not toiling, not spinning – like lilies that shirk–
Like the brash dandelions that savage the lawn.

The now is silent of curses or praise
Jilted, abandoned to hells of what weather
Left to our own devices forever.
We watch the sun rust at the end of its days.

Culture Matters Anthology Submission Call Out ‘100 Years of Solidarity’ – marking the centenary of the UK’s General Strike in 1926

Culture Matters invites poems for a special poetry anthology marking the 100th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike. The collection, 100 Years of Solidarity, will celebrate and memorialise the voices and experiences of working class people, past and present, through poems that remember, and uphold the labour movement’s enduring values of solidarity and collective action.

Consider submitting one or two original, unpublished poems that speak to themes such as:

Trade union life, strikes, picket lines, and industrial action

Acts of solidarity and working-class resilience

Historical reflections from the last century

Inspiration drawn from labour movement history or contemporary struggles

The hopes, anger, humour, and humanity of people organising for justice

Submission guidelines:

1–2 poems, maximum 50 lines each

Please submit as a Word document

Include your name, address, and email

Send to info@culturematters.org.uk with the subject line: “100 years entry”

Deadline: 28th February 2026

The anthology is scheduled for publication on May 1st, 2026, to coincide with International Workers’ Day.

Further information can be found here: https://www.culturematters.org.uk/callout-to-celebrate-100-years-since-the-general-strike/

A Tribute to Fred Voss

The poet Fred Voss, who has died at the age of 72, was one of the great American writers of manual labour. He went beyond the poet as witness in a journalistic sense, for he lived what he wrote and he wrote more than three thousand poems.

Fred was born in Los Angeles in 1952. Initially he thought he would go into academia. On passing a Bachelor of Arts degree in English he was offered a place on a Ph.D. program at the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles. But he turned it down to begin work as a machinist, which he carried on doing for the rest of his life.

He turned to poetry as a way of documenting the lives of his fellow workers who work for the ‘man’, the ‘machine’, the ‘system’; machinists who may be making engine parts for fighter planes that drop bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. His workmates came from across the Americas and his poetry exhibits that microcosm of working class life, which you rarely find in other peoples’ poetry, besides Martin Hayes and his portrayals of London couriers and controllers.

Fred published numerous collections. His first, Goodstone was published here in the UK by the ever astute Neil Astley’s Bloodaxe Books in 1991, in which Voss did a reading tour of the UK. His poetry had arisen out of the South Californian poetry of Charles Bukowski. But it was Professor John Osborne from Hull in the UK, who first published a hundred poems of Voss in the influential Bête Noire magazine which ran for ten years between 1985-1995. Goodstone was the touchstone of the more than three thousand poems Voss wrote over the next 35 years. Goodstone was the name Voss derived from the companies he had worked as a machinist. The poems, like the many that followed, told of the day-to-day struggles of men and women working in machine shops and factories of Southern California from the late 80s onwards.

Bloodaxe went on to publish two more collections with the wonderfully evocative titles, Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls 1998, and Hammers and Hearts of the Gods 2009, which was the Morning Star’s book of that year. Other collections include ‘Some Day there will be Machine Shops Full of Roses’, in 2023 with Smokestack Books. As well as two with Culture Matters, The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of Our Hand, and Robots Have No Bones in 2018.

In the introduction to Robots Have No Bones (two years into the first Trump presidency I wrote:

“Fred Voss’s poems situate us in the workplace, and by doing so, show us the humanity and diversity of those who work there – ones who both support or hate Trump, but as one want, at a minimum to support their family, not have to struggle and work long hours to do just that.” Sadly, nothing has changed, and we are now at the beginning of another Trump presidency.

Fred was very generous with his poetry, offering me two poems in the early days of Proletarian Poetry back in 2015. Then more recently in an academic paper I wrote about his work, and that of his good friend Martin Hayes, on the Poetics of Precarious Work for the journal English (forthcoming in 2025). He was over the moon about his poetry being analysed for the precarity of the job, given his initial interest in the academic life, and it is so sad he didn’t get to see the published copy.

Two poems illustrate the lives of his fellow workers and Fred’s deep empathy and love for them. In ‘Los Angeles’ (see below), many of the workers wear crosses, believe in God, go to church on Sundays, but because of the environment in which they live, through poverty, violence, and low wages, are close to breakdown, close to ending their life. This is also seen in the poem ‘Grease Spots’, as a worker hopes the US Air Force will make a ‘grease spot’ of the Iraqis in response to the Twin Towers crashes. Voss wonders conversely, if their own government has made a grease spot of them, because the workers are barely able to feed their children and may never be able to retire.

I have a feeling that Fred wasn’t given deserved recognition by the mainstream poetry community in the US; there is no record of him on either the Poetry Foundation’s website nor the American Academy of Poets, and yet there is a Wikipedia page of his life.

Fred is a great loss both as a beautiful human being and a poet who exposed the daily struggle facing workers in the precarious waters of late stage capitalism. Our thoughts and love go to his dear partner Joan Jobe Smith.

Los Angeles’ by Fred Voss

In Los Angeles I have seen
men in factories with big crucifixes
on their chests
crucifixes
exchanged for guns
needles
leaps out of 10^th story windows crucifixes
big
and heavy swinging on the massive hairy chests of these men crucifixes
exchanged for bottles that had these men face down on floors
or in alleys bottles
or needles that took their women their families
their souls I have seen men
in factories
without one trace of shame wearing big shiny crucifixes
on their chests men
this close
to picking up a knife
and ruining their lives this close
to blood they could never wash off their hands men
from gangs from prisons
from tiny rooms where the devil pulled up a chair
next to them men
who’ve earned
their crucifixes.^[i]

[i] Fred Voss, Hammers and Hearts of the Gods (Hexham: Bloodaxe Books, 2009), p. 37.

‘The Harlot and the Rake, poems after William Hogarth.’ Publication Day for My Debut Pamphlet.

I’m delighted that my pamphlet, an heroic crown of sonnets after William Hogarth’s prints, is published today by Culture Matters. It comes with a wonderful introduction by Fran Lock, and cover art by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson.

You can purchase a copy for £7.50 (plus £1.50 P&P, UK) at

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/praynard/9 , or Worldwide https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/praynard/12

From Fran Lock’s introduction

Peter Raynard’s heroic crown of sonnets after William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) of A Harlot’s Progress (1731) and A Rake’s Progress (1733) run the same gamut of moral and social concerns but bring a contemporary socialist sensibility to bear on the interconnected fates of Tom Rakewell and Moll Hackabout. Raynard uses the connected but very different downfalls of Tom and Moll to interrogate the complexities of ‘choice’, the notion of complicity and the limits of our sympathy.

The Heir

A rich Father dies, so a son’s life as heir begins.
Vanity’s the sling which Tom will throw family
chains from: his Father, a staid suit of a man
battened down by the clamp of God’s utility

mother weeping, wife with child warming inside her.
He will leave enough to oil their grief, but says there
is no need to pray. With old money, time does shun
less miserly ways ending troughs of emotion

such wealth held: when men lay idle no-one need read
King James’ bible. New clothes fit both size and stead
with enough silver to sail a ship. London ho!
with its trade winds blown by slave labour. God well knows

the streets men of off-note graze on. All benighted
in the Capital’s treasures of sin but not be sinned

“What Hogarth etched and engraved, Raynard successfully recreates in verse.
The comparisons of life in Britain today are there to be made.” (Owen Gallagher)

“The tone Raynard manages to hit with his quite ravishing language and the use of the 3^rd
person voice as witness carries you along like you’re on some kind of walking tour of the
grubby streets of the human mind/body leaving you eager to turn the next page, the next corner, to see what has next befallen Moll or Rake.” (Martin Hayes)

Publication Day for Manland my Second Collection

Today my second collection ‘Manland‘ is published by Nine Arches Press, https://www.ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/manland (£9.99 with free P&P). The first fifty orders will be signed. Nine Arches Press also do a very good book subscription,

Described as a a “bold, brilliant and outspoken new collection of poems that scrutinise men and manhood, mental health, working class lives and disability. Aloud and alive with music, wit, anger and rebellion, this is an accomplished, politically-aware and vital book.”

I am grateful to Fran Lock, Jacqueline Saphra, and Richard Skinner for the following endorsements:

“Part manifesto, part hymn, part raging lament, this collection takes apart the dirty engine of so-called masculinity, strips it down to its component parts, reconsiders and rearranges them using a dazzling array of poetic forms. It is only through acknowledging the strength of their vulnerability, these poems suggest, that men will be able to manifest change in our broken system where the violence of patriarchy is the enemy of us all.” – Jacqueline Saphra

“In Manland Peter Raynard traverses the unstable terrain of working-class masculinity. His poems meet manhood in all of its banter and swagger; its persistent myths and dangerous silences. With his characteristic lyric verve, Raynard explores what it means to be a man, a father, a husband, and a son. The result is moving, candid, wise and tender, full of humour and hard-won insight. A convincing and beautiful book.” – Fran Lock

“One of the things I love most about Peter Raynard’s work is his voice. His voice is necessary, vital, passionate. It is the voice of anger at social injustice, a voice that deconstructs toxic masculinity, a chronicler of illness. Above all, it is the voice of truth. He tells us how the world is, not how we would like it to be. In this way, Peter Raynard is nothing short of a truth-teller.” – Richard Skinner

If you are able to buy it, I’d be very grateful and I hope you enjoy it.

Best wishes, Peter

Free Anthology: A Fish that Rots from the Head (selected and edited by Rip Bulkeley)

A Fish Rots From The Head: A Poetic and Political Wake (published by Culture Matters) is a flash anthology of poetry and artwork, by around 100 poets and artists from England, Scotland and Wales. It expresses the fury and betrayal felt by working people about the leadership of this country – the mendacity, selfishness, corruption, smears on opponents and disregard for the general public shown by leading figures in the Johnson government.

This collection of images, parodies, rants, squibs, and full-on poems, put together in less than three weeks, is just part of a tide of satire now sweeping across Britain. It challenges, satirises, despairs, and even dares to laugh at the venal moral hypocrisy of our leaders, whose malignant mixture of callousness and ineptitude has never made life so hard, in so many ways, for so many working people in this country. Through its demonstration of compassion for the suffering of others, and its protest against wrongdoing by those in high office, this collection of poems and artworks provides a very necessary space and inspiration for solidarity and resistance. Let’s hope the removal vans come soon!

The book is available below. Feel free to download it and share with your friends and networks. You are also free to make a donation towards Culture Matter’s costs, as much as you like, using this button and download the anthology here. In solidarity!

Callouts for Poetry/Prose Submissions from Culture Matters

There are a number of callouts for working class writing from the co-operative publisher Culture Matters

The Bread and Roses Poetry Award 2021,
https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/3630-callout-the-bread-and-roses-poetry-award-2021

The Bread and Roses Songwriting and Spoken Word Award 2021,
http://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/music/item/3609-callout-the-bread-and-roses-songwriting-and-spoken-word-award-2021

A Scottish anthology of radical prose, the follow-up to Kist of
Thistles,
http://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/life-writing/item/3608-callout-working-people-s-stories-from-contemporary-scotland

The Brown Envelope Book,
http://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/3576-callout-for-the-brown-envelope-book

The Cry of the Poor anthology,
https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/3631-callout-the-cry-of-the-poor

My Year In and (mostly) Out of Poetry, with poem ‘Rabbie’ for my Father

My year began well. I spent a wonderful week on a Nine Arches retreat in Hartsop with fellow poets, Jane Commane, Jo Bell, Josephine Corcoran, Gregory Leadbetter, and Roy MacFarlane. At that point, COVID was still an inside page and I can’t remember it coming up in conversation. Roll on into the pandemic and I found it increasingly difficult to engage with poetry and the outside world more generally, so withdrew from most things beyond my front gate including social media.

1. OUT

Roughly two weeks ago, my 87 year old Father rang to say he was finally getting his second hip operation. So, although happy for him, the worry began its loop de loop. Despite a delay of over a year, he is one of the lucky ones. Born in the Gorbals in the early ‘30s, he’s been in many a scrape, from cracking his skull aged 3 to gang fights, bar fights, burst ulcer, kidney problems, and now his joints.

My extended family has been relatively lucky in terms of tragedies; but that ended this year, as it has for many people. The tragic irony was that ours wasn’t Covid. My wife’s cousin died in a car crash in April, after an impatient driver tried to overtake on the opposite side of the road, and hit him head on. He was a beautiful person; a teacher in Kent, aged twenty-six and just really starting his adult life. Because of lockdown restrictions, only his mother, father, and sister were able to attend the funeral.

[INTERLUDE]

Even though I have not read or written any poetry, I have still thought a lot about it, in particular working class poetry. In recent times, important poetry books of working class life have emerged, such as Caleb Femi’s recent Poor, all of Fran Lock’s brilliant writing, Jay Bernard’s Surge, Chip Hamer’s Class Act, and Julia Webb’s Threat, to name but a few. And I hope that 2021 sees more new voices.

I am most excited for Malika’s Poetry Kitchen 20^th anniversary year, with its anthology (out in August) and series of events that will hopefully further fuse race and class within poetry. Malika Booker is one of the most inspiring people I have met, and Malika’s Kitchen is one of the most important things to happen in poetry, and I miss all of the members.

My son is a producer of drill and trap beats so I have been listening to quite a lot of Grime (check out GRM Daily). Some of the lyrics/poetry these young men and women are producing is lit (in my son’s parlance). Writing about poverty, gang violence, prison, it is a vital avenue for working class voices. I like Meekz, but I also love Ghetts’ video ‘Proud Family’ that goes beyond the horror stories, to portray his family life. Poetry can learn a lot from this genre.

2. OUT

Then, in the midst of my breakdown, I cancelled my third book (which was due to be published in two weeks). But after a few calmer weeks, my wonderful publisher and fellow Coventarian Jane Commane of Nine Arches Press, talked me round and the book will now come out in 2022 for my 60^th year; although sadly I won’t be part the Coventry City of Culture’s Contains Strong Language weekend in September of next year.

Then, ratatattat eight days ago, my youngest son developed a cough and temperature, and tested positive for Covid. Three days later, my wife tested positive. I have a number of endocrine conditions, which puts me at heightened risk, so my anxiety hit the roof. However, the imperative of looking after the two of them, with the help of my older son, helped ease me away from my own dark thoughts.

Thankfully, he and I tested negative, so we are now running the Covid Hotel to feed my wife and other son and keep their spirits up. But it is exhausting, wearing a mask for most of the day, constantly cleaning, constantly stressed; though ten years a househusband has helped (unlike the so-called progressive Tony Blair, who admitted to not doing his chores – naughty boy). I can only imagine how truly horrendous it has been for nurses and doctors.

I am hopeful that things will be okay over the next day or two as their symptoms are subsiding, and we are nearing the end of enforced isolation. Though the best we could get for our Xmas meal is an Iceland frozen turkey crown – but it only makes me feel more working class 😉

My Father had his operation today, and thankfully it was a success and he should be home before Christmas Day. All of which makes me momentarily believe there is light at the end of a cliché.

I am hoping he can walk again in the New Year, and I have wrote this wee poem for him.

Keep well everyone, and I hope your year has not been terrible, thank you for continuing to follow Proletarian Poetry, even though like an old boxer, I keep trying to retire it. Much love to you all, and come Hogmanay, raise a glass for the sake of your own Auld Lang Syne.

Rabbie by Peter Raynard

For my Father, life has ever been
a braw bricht moonlit nicht
But Lauder was no Burns
for the Ayrshire Bard’s picture
was a fixture on the shelf
within a line of our kin.
Though my Father never read poetry
Burns was the man
like Celtic the team
whisky the drink
leaving Scotland the means
to go down South
behind auld enemy lines
armed with saltire crosses
their brogue voices lilting
the bars with songs
for the displaced who
wandered many a weary feet
singing their way home
for the sake of a fading time
for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.

Cheers!