Proletarian Poetry is a new project which aims to show all aspects of working-class life, from historical and contemporary poems of struggle, through to the everyday experiences of people enjoying life beyond the means of production.

The aim is to get a more rounded picture of the lives of working-class people.

The title is a tribute to the “proletarian poets” of the 1920s that included Langston Hughes. Hughes was part of the movement whose writing had a class consciousness to it, that didn’t hold back in its description of the plight of black working-class people during the interwar decades of the early 20th century.

Critics, however, claimed that Hughes was portraying the black experience in a negative way, one that showed them as helpless, feckless even. There was nothing positive. In his defence, Hughes said that he didn’t know any wealthy, highly educated people — black or otherwise — and only wrote what he saw. And he did write some great poems such as the declarative Democracy.

But this is a dilemma facing many portrayals of the working classes in many art forms. Films such as Brassed Off, Billy Elliott, Educating Rita, Trainspotting, Nil By Mouth, good as many of them are, tend towards either being horror stories of dysfunctionality, abuse — both drugs and physical — and criminality, or fairy tales of escape from working-class life.

Poetry has a reputation of being part of a middle-class establishment, and I think until recently that is justified. Many poems of working-class life never seemed to make particular headway in mainstream circles.

But with the re-emergence of performance poetry and its wide uptake, numerous open-mic events, slams and websites, things may well be changing. I was at the Forward Prize for Poetry and delighted that Liz Berry won the first collection prize for Black Country, and Kei Millar (below) the main prize for his The Cartographer Tries to Map his Way to Zion. Here are important poems with a narrative that has a history and metaphysics different to what and who has been recognised before.

Proletarian Poetry intends to include all forms of poetry: persona, personal, plain, lyrical, vernacular and performance. I will be looking for poems that pick out the unusual, the unsaid, and the unpopular. It will also review collections and highlight events.

There has been a deal of interest already in the project and thus far I have included poems from Langston Hughes, the aforementioned Liz Berry, and Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Hoxton Stories which tell of her grandfather’s experience of living there before its gentrification and working-class flight.

My initial list also included Percy Bysshe Shelley, Debris Stevenson, Malika Booker — without whom I don’t think I would have found poetry — Tony Walsh (Longfella), John Agard, Lemn Sissay, George the Poet, Anthony Anaxagorou, Tony Harrison, Simon Armitage, Jo Bell, Josephine Corcoran, Inua Ellams, Kate Tempest, Hollie McNiesh, Paul Summers, William Blake, Anna Robinson. People have already more than doubled that number, with the help of Canal Poet Laureate Jo Bell.

I have to confess that I made the mistake of asking for poets, when really what I am looking for is specific poems. This is an experiment, an archaeological dig, a geographical search. I’m not sure what will be unearthed but I am optimistic and excited by the prospect of doing something rare in the poetry world.

I am looking for poems, not necessarily poets. The focus is on the poems and the lives portrayed within them. Please join in, point me towards poems, events, articles that will help the project get us towards a fully formed poetry of working-class lives.

Visit proletarianpoetry.com or @proletarianpoet with your suggestions. Peter Raynard is a poet, playwright, editor and blogger.

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