fred voss

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 Earth and the Stars in the Palm of our Hand by Fred Voss

Image by Franklin Hunting*

To paraphrase an old REM song, “It’s the end of work as we know it. But I feel fine.” In the not-too-distant future, this will be the end game for politicians. Although there is a continuance of, and even in the case of President Agent Orange, a revival of the policy of creating more jobs, the reality is that under the current capitalist trajectory, there aren’t enough to go round. We are already seeing it with the rise in automation and the precariat and gig economy; people are scraping around for part-time jobs that are unsustainable economically. Politicians will have to find ways of keeping people happy (however that is defined) outside of work.

Some commentators are beginning to write about the post-work economy and how today’s politicians are wrong in their promise to create more jobs. In a provocative essay, “Fuck Work!” the historian James Livingston claims that the belief in work as a central factor of what it means to be human, “has become ridiculous, because there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.” Similarly, Yuvi Noah Hariri describes this situation in a more apocalyptic fashion, “The new longevity and super-human qualities are likely to be the preserve of the techno super-rich, the masters of the data universe. Meanwhile, the redundancy of labour, supplanted by efficient machines, will create an enormous “useless class”, without economic or military purpose.”

Fred02 The poem, The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of our Hand by Fred Voss, laments the state of the capitalist economy at a place he has worked for over thirty years; even though “it’s a pretty good job we have /considering how tough it is out there in so many other factories /in this era of the busted union and the beaten-down worker /but paradise? /and we walk away toward our machines ready for another 10 / hours inside tin walls /as outside perfect blue waves roll onto black sand Hawaiian / beaches /and billionaires raise martini glasses.” But in response to an ironic comment (“Another day in paradise,”) from a workmate, he asks the question: “why not a job /joyous as one of these poems I write /a job where each turn of a wrench /each ring of a hammer makes my soul sing out glad for each /drop of sweat /rolling down my back because the world has woken up and /stopped worshiping money.” Everyone needs a sense of worth, even in a mundane job, where they don’t feel exploited and undervalued. For as Fred beautifully writes, [there is] “nothing more noble /than bread on the table and a steel cutter’s grandson /reaching for the moon and men /dropping time cards into time clocks and stepping up to their /machines /like the sun /couldn’t rise /without them.” The challenge now is create a sense of this nobility both inside and outside the workplace.

This poem comes from a new pamphlet by Fred Voss published by Culture Matters & Manifesto Press, and supported by the trades union, Unite.

38 years ago Fred Voss walked into a steel mill and put on a hardhat and picked up a torch and a wrench and then a pen to write of souls sold in the job market, lives fed into time clocks, men owned and ordered like they were hardly men at all, by bosses and owners too good to shoulder a load or grab a pickaxe, as the earth is covered with concrete and the trees and tigers die. Fred Voss looks for the day when all this will be changed when women and men with dirt on their hands and gold in their souls will no longer be treated like children but given the power and respect the true makers of this world deserve. Voss has published three books of poems with Bloodaxe: Goodstone(1991), Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls (1998) and Hammers and Hearts of the Gods (2009).

The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of our Hand

“Another day in paradise,”
a machinist says to me as he drops his time card into the time
     clock and the sun
rises
over the San Gabriel mountains
and we laugh
it’s a pretty good job we have
considering how tough it is out there in so many other factories
in this era of the busted union and the beaten-down worker
but paradise?
and we walk away toward our machines ready for another 10
     hours inside tin walls
as outside perfect blue waves roll onto black sand Hawaiian
     beaches
and billionaires raise martini glasses
sailing their yachts to Cancun
but I can’t help thinking
why not paradise
why not a job
where I feel like I did when I was 4
out in my father’s garage
joyously shaving a block of wood in his vise with his plane
as a pile of sweet-smelling wood shavings rose at my feet
and my father smiled down at me and we held
the earth and the stars in the palm of our hand
why not a job
joyous as one of these poems I write
a job where each turn of a wrench
each ring of a hammer makes my soul sing out glad for each
     drop of sweat
rolling down my back because the world has woken up and
     stopped worshiping money
and power and fame
and because presidents and kings and professors and popes and
     Buddhas and mystics
and watch repairmen and astrophysicists and waitresses and
     undertakers know
there is nothing more important than the strong grip and will of
     men
carving steel
like I do
nothing more important than Jorge muscling a drill through
     steel plate so he can send money
to his mother and sister living under a sacred mountain in
     Honduras
nothing more noble
than bread on the table and a steel cutter’s grandson
reaching for the moon and men
dropping time cards into time clocks and stepping up to their
machines
like the sun
couldn’t rise
without them.

[*Image by Franklin Hunting]

Factotums by Fred Voss

The author Toni Morrison began writing because of a void she felt in the books she read, even in the time of rapid change in the 1960s. “Things were moving too fast in the early 1960s-70s… it was exciting but it left me bereft…. There were no books about me, I didn’t exist in all the literature I had read… this person, this female, this black did not exist centre-self.” I have felt this myself with the majority of the literature I have read over the past thirty years. As I have commented previously, the working classes, irrespective of gender or ethnic background, have rarely been portrayed in anything but overly dramatic caricatures. It is of course why I started Proletarian Poetry, but it also haunts my own writing as I try not to mimic that which I am critical of.

Both writers and readers will question who their writing is for. I think both will initially say it is for themselves; I know I write to help me think clearly and improve my mood. But of course we also write because we feel we have something to say, a unique take on something (if the writing is good that is) and then possibly we are writing about a group of people who are either neglected in literature or misrepresented.

This was certainly Toni Morrison’s reason, and also in the case of Fred Voss’ poem, Factotums, where he tells of a workmate who ‘catches’ him reading, so he turns, “Bukowski’s Factotum/to the side so the machinist can’t see the cover.” The machinist himself has only ever read one book, “He was probably forced to read Of Mice and Men in High School/told how important it was/made to hate it/like castor oil.” I know with my own sons, they often feel the same way about books being foisted upon them at school. (more…)