"Rising"

I don't have letters after my name
A not an English teacher
Or put on garish patterned woolly jumpers.
Nor do I cycle, eat tofu
Or drink cappucino.
Neither do I wear intellectual spectacles
Or read 'The Guardian'
And if I did I would
Need a dictionary
To understand
What all the fancy
Four syllabled words mean.
Even when I drank
I was no real ale pisshead
And Morris Dancers are plain weird.
I take comfort from the fact
I don't 'tick' any stereotypical boxes
That mark me out as a poet.
But yes, I am
Working class
Unlike a million and
One middles class types
Who call themselves poets
As a badge of poncy honour
Even if their stuff
Is miles more confusing
And up their own arse
Than all of mine put together.
I have to ask...
Are there any
Working class poets
As I'm told
Again, and again and again
Erm, there's Tim Wells, yes
Tim Wells. Um yes,
Tim Wells is good.
So it looks like you and me, pal
Even though we've never met.
But fear not
We're 'Rising'.
By the way
In case anyone is wondering
About my own credentials
I grew up on council estates
I work for the Council in a library
In the middle of Bermondsey
I support Dulwich Hamlet Football Club
I'm always skint and in debt
And I'm a working class poet in my spare time.

Dulwich Mishi 25th July 2013

( As I've mentioned before, I enjoy writing & reading poetry, but it is diffilcult to find a 'general genre' of 'working class poetry'. When I ask various poetry people. library staff, other poets, poetry websites, they all mention Tim Wells, but then struggle to list anyone else, but insist that "there's lots out there"... He edits a poetry zine called 'Rising' which has excellent poems in it, with a working class emphasis, I hasten to add none of mine in that class, I am comparing myself to him as a joke! )

(I shared this at the 'Poets Anon' group, in Croydon, on Monday 18th August 2013)