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.