He's a Legend of His Kind

Lost voices of Victorian working class uncovered in political protest poems

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/mar/15/books.booksnews1

Mike Skinner- The streets

Listening to 'The streets'' Mike Skinner rhyme about everyday working class life provides an insight into where working class poetry is today. The lyricist describes such settings as the local fish'n'chip shop and eating a 'morning after' breakfast in a greasy cafeteria. His lyrics are distinctly, and playfully full of slang, and reflect the creative British speech of the everyday man. His lyrics both celebrate and critique the society he lives in, from the taxes he pays to the way the police treat certain characters out late at night. Though he is working class, his social commentary is not critiqued as 'propaganda' by those in the music industry. Instead he is revered for his honesty and lyrical spin on his dreary grey surroundings. What has changed then in society for working-class poetry to capture the mainstream? 

Perhaps it is the music that accompanies the poetry, placing it with the thousands of other musicians who have subverted social norms to public outcry and praise. Perhaps it is the postmodern period we live in, that requires us to comment on our context instead of conform to ideals and myths. In any case, Mike Skinners lyrics are a fresh change from other types of working class poetry that don't necessary exhibit the norms of working life. In America, hip-hop and rap culture often comes from artists with working class backgrounds who talk about the 'hood', but their take reflects less the realities of those who work hard day and night to earn a living, and more those outlaws such as B.I.G who glorify their position in street and gang war culture, e.g. 'Totin' guns just as long as me, the bitch belongs with me' -Me and my Bitch, B.I.G, 1994. Skinner instead neither glorifies nor condemns working class life, just describes it. Later when his fame rose, he wrote about the daily realities of the music making business in 'The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living.' 2006  

"Mayhem text's me about the press and TV
See if I've taken any ES so I can get some sleep
Nap on the settee, the laptop next to me
Wince for my family at the Skinner Scandal of the week"

Skinners change in material might seem to some as a sell-out from his traditional working class roots, but the streets still rap about their life in a real and honest way, no matter how abrasive or confronting that might be. 

'When You Wasn't Famous'

2006-The Streets

Ah see, right see the thing
That’s got it all fucked up now is camera-phones
How the hell am I supposed to be able to do a line
In front of complete strangers
When I know they've all got cameras

When you're a famous boy
It gets really easy to get girls
It's all so easy you get a bit spoilt
So when you try to pull a girl
Who is also famous too
It feels just like when you wasn’t famous

The celebrity pages in papers don’t tell tales that are always to the line of the truth
It’s till a line at which most likely you’ll have the time, or enough finance to sue
Which is why it’s so frightening buying papers in the morning fearing the next Mike Skinner scoop
‘Cause I used to believe what I read, so now I know that others will believe that it’s true

But I realised, with you the truth can be, a whole lot worse than the flack
My whole life I never thought I'd see, a pop star smoke crack
And I must admit I was quite shocked, with that thing you did with me on my back
But outside in the lobby, I shouldn't have laughed when you slapped that man

When you're a famous boy
It gets really easy to get girls
It's all so easy you get a bit spoilt
So when you try to pull a girl
Who is also famous too
It feels just like when you wasn’t famous

You were so much fun
I really got to like you more than you liked me
I really hoped that you'd stay
Considering the amount of prang you'd done, you looked amazing on cd uk
You learn dances, do promo, cameras flashing, get in the van and zoom away
I wake up high, dizzy feel, hung over and sorry for my doomed day

But I know I got a bit close to you, and that you found it fucking boring
You taught me so much about how to deal with the fire I’d fallen in
And what version of a rumour would be next day everyone's story of me
You taught me all the realities and turn the page and ignore ‘emWhen you're a famous boy
It gets really easy to get girls
It's all so easy you get a bit spoilt
So when you try to pull a girl
Who is also famous too
It feels just like when you wasn’t famous

Anyway, I had to rest my beer hat, delete my dealer’s number and unroll my bank notes
And we were on borrowed time anyway, what with the daily toilet papers not knowin’
And I knew that when the people who thought they knew you, when they found out, I would’ve been mocked
Which is ironic, ‘cause in reality, standing next to you I look fucking soft

Whenever I see you on MTV, I can’t stop my big wide smile
And past the children’s appeal, I see the darkness behind
We both know the scratches on my back, much better than the alludes and lies
I miss the bitchin’ and shoutin’, but I'm glad I got out in time

When you're a famous boy
It gets really easy to get girls
It's all so easy you get a bit spoilt
So when you try to pull a girl
Who is also famous too
It feels just like when you wasn’t famous

You can't keep fucking popstars
We’ve got a fucking business to run
There are industry repercussions, Michael
I know

 

He's running like a cyclone.

Benjamin Smith: 
an experimental working class poet, who's honest writing causes much controversy because of its explicit content. Many people question whether this is poetry or pornography, what do you guys think?


Ben Smith 
Shaving My balls part 1

There has got to be something
Therapudic
About clipping away at your pubes

Hacking through the vines.

Un earthing the pale
And wrinkly little man
who talks a whole heap of
Piss

Like Indiana jones.

I tell my family
im going to have a shower
but i take a pair of scissors
and
a cut throat.

Half drunk
I saw away at my balls
And my guts just underneath
My "checkmate" tattoo.

Later that night
When we are watching telly
I get the most insane itching
On my crotch

Which ends with me in the bathroom
Spreading my dick
WIth hand creme
And hair conditioner.

A bottle of cider in one hand
And creamy chunks of
Hair product
Stripped through the red
And blotchy
Blisters of my groin

Like a feather plucked
Hen
- Pink and white

My penis is a pale pole
poking out from the mess
like a cube of tofu.

Therapudic they say.
Beautie is pain.


References: 
Pearson, Chris, 2009,Ben smith: Shaving my balls,The Outlaw Poetry Network, viewed 10th of september 2011, <http://outlawpoetry.com/2009/10/27/ben-smith-shaving-my-balls/>


Smith, Benjamin, 2011, Horror sleaze trash, viewed on the 7th of september 2011, <http://horrorsleazetrash.blogspot.com/?zx=4134b350886b61d8>

He believes in good and evils

                                                            Artist Judith Henry,
                                                  "who I saw in NY, circa 1970-2000"

Judith Henry specializes in the documentation of the working class through her lens.

 

Reminiscent of artist August Sanders who spent his days documenting the people of his 20th century Germany. He collected photographs of brick layers, bankers, soldiers, farmers, even circus artists. His collection was titled, "Man of the twentieth century." 

References: 

Henry, Judith, 2010, Who i saw in NY circa 1970-2000, Judith Henry, viewed on 5th of September, < http://judithhenry.net/theme/projects/who-i-saw-in-ny-circa-1970-2000/>

Smith, Andrew, 2003, August sander, Andrew  Smith Gallery, viewed on 2nd of september, < http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/augustsander> 

Blue denim in his vein

Words from some kind of dead end job....

The bar

It’s 12pm, the regulars litter

cheeks blushing in the September sun

lemonade and boots stick to the floor

Rolling cigarettes, licking dry papers

hungry I am

 but the smoke fills my stomach and

I am sick

           

A bourbon and coke, a Carlton, a teddy and a smoke
I pull the tap with a clink

They’ll chew the fat disagree spit the dummy, fuck this fuck that

Poor old bastards with absent families
They count out their coins, slide them across with chipped nails

And give me a wink with their tip

           
A clean suit walks in, smells like soap
All too early for the afternoon 
heads turn and watch,

wide smile on my face

            Peroni please

            ... and he points

           
his sausage fingers search for coins

His heavy breathing, he’s looking at my tits
tip me big you fat bastard
He hands me the coins, sticky and hot, price of a Carlton to the cent
Fuck all ain’t free.

By Millie Cotes. 

The hostel

Fogging up the carriage on the train ride in.

First things first

who’s gonna do the bins?

First guests arrive at an ungodly hour

But checkout is eleven

“and I haven’t had a shower!”

kick people out with a knock on the door

only to discover

theres vomit on the floor.

Joints at the window can’t do no harm

Til the red engine comes

And we hear the smoke alarm

We’ve run out of forks, there’s no clean spoons

They’ll settle for kebabs

And a box of goon.

Tell me your stories, like where have you been?

At home you’re a hero

But here you’re mainstream.

The sense of adventure and freedom inside

It’s a business, you know

That we’re there to provide

 By Eimear O'Sullivan

Well he's a steel town disciple

Working class poetics is stylistically different from historically celebrated poetry, in that it serves as a functioning text, which reveals the position that the working class holds in society. It is used as a  social commentary rather than attempting to emulate ideals of beauty and perfection.

Lauter ( 2005), states that there are three issues that distinguishes working class poetry from other styles, " the details one chooses, the priority or emphasis one gives them and the particular terms, the language, in which one registers" (lauter, 2005,p.66). 

In working class poetry for example there is an emphasis on daily humiliations, industrial violence, struggles money and power. Daily life is not glorified but bluntly expressed using often colloquial and crude language.The registry of their language is as Sarah Attfield describes, " to record the realistic speech patterns of people who do not speak Standard English nor conduct conversations along intellectually analytic lines. Therefore, they avoid heightened language in a deliberate attempt to prevent alienating their working-class readers and the musicality and 'physicality' of speech often provides the natural rhythm and shape of the poetry"(Attfield, 2007, p.52-53). Which corresponds with Raymond William's (1960), suggestion that working class is associated with the 'collective', where as bourgeoise is aligned with the individual (lauter, 2005, p.63). 

 Furthermore, they don't overuse metaphors as this aesthetic requires distance and contemplation, their work has an urgency and fast pace that flows to an industrial beat.Doesn’t overdo the metaphors, those types of aesthetics require distance and contemplation, rather than the urgency and drilling fast paced nature of working class poetry.

Counting Tips 

for Janet Zandy 

My mother came home from work,

sat down at tbe kitchen table

and counted ber tips, nickel by nickel,

quarter by quarter, dime by dime.

I sat across from her reading Yeats.

No moonlight graced our window

and it wasn't Pre-Raphaelite pallor

that bleached my mother's cheeks.

I've never been able to forget

the moment she said- 

interrupting The Lake Isle ofInnisfree"

I told him to go to hell."

A Back Bay businessman

had held back the tip, asking,

"How much do you think you're worth?"

And she'd said, "You can go to hell!"

All evening at the Winthrop Room she'd fed

stockbrokers, politicians, mafioso capos.

I was eighteen, a commuter student at BU,

riding the MTA to classes every day

and she was forty-one in her frilly cap,

pink uniform, and white waitress shoes.

"He just laughed but his wife was there

and she complained and the boss fired me."

Later, after a highball, she cried

and asked me not to tell my father

(at least not yet) and Ben Franklin

stared up from his quarter

looking as if he thought she deserved it,

and Roosevelt, from his dime, reminded her

she was twenty years shy of Social Security.

But the buffalo on the nickel. He-

he seemed to understand. 

(By John Gilgun). 

Attfield, S. ,2009, ‘The Poetics of Class’ from Working class Voices: The Working Class Experience in Contemporary Australian Poetry, VDM: Saarbruken, 40-62

Lauter, P, 2005, ‘UnderConstruction: Working Class Writing’ in Sherry Linkon and John Russo (eds) New Working Class Studies, Ithica: Cornell University Press, 63-77

Still mad at uncle sam

Working class writing is often subject to criticism that labels it merely as propaganda or as politically motivated. Zandy (2004) states that working class poetry is ultimately concerned with the ' means of struggle'. However Lauter (2005) disagrees,stating "the working class has been composing in every available genre, in a great variety of styles, and with many different objectives for as long as poetry has existed."(Lauter 2005, p.64)    

Perhaps the reason there is such a prevalence of "marxist sentiment" that characterizes much of the work is because as Sarah Attfield finds:

"It is not possible to separate art and aesthetics from politics and society, and even those works of literature that claim to have transcended ideological considerations can be seen as having political implications as the writer is revealing the kind of class privilege that allows a distancing from the everyday. Literature is not, as Bernstein asserts, created in a vacuum completely separate from society and therefore, ideology can not help but shape literature"  Charles Bernstein, A Poetics, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Thus, all texts reflect the context in which they are written. Working class poetry comes from a particular angle just as middle class poetry expresses ideologies that are relevant to them. 

For example Working class poetry may not have use for the metaphorical musings of nature and love characteristic of romanticism, but instead often concentrates on the gritty realism of day to day working life. 

maybe the problem is that criticism places romantic poetry at the pinnacle of acceptable poetry styles, revealing the elitist attitude within literary theory and constructed canons.

 Bernstein,C. 1992, A Poetics, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

Lauter, P, 2005, ‘UnderConstruction: Working Class Writing’ in Sherry Linkon and John Russo (eds) New Working Class Studies, Ithica: Cornell University Press, 63-77

Zandy,J. 1995 ‘‘Editorial: Working-Class Studies,’’ Women’’s Studies Quarterly 1-2 (5).