Thursday, February 6, 2025
Several days ago, I posted a couple dozen poetry reading flyers and I noticed that two of the poets I read with frequently were Harry Northup and Fred Voss. This morning I had cataract surgery on my left eye, and no sooner had Linda brought me home than she came up to me wit a Facebook post from Joan Jobe Smith announcing that Fred Voss, Joan’s loving and devoted poet-husband, died two weeks ago.
Fred was a remarkable, steadfast poet. He was a “plein air” poet in that his poems directly came from te environment in which he labored to make a living. Pilip Levine wrote a poem entitled “What Work Is,” and it was not his only portrait of what it means to labor for a living. Fred Voss, though, made his employment not just the subject of his poems but the central meditation of a life also devoted to poetry.
While working full-time as a machinist for 45 years, Fred had eight collections of poetry, including several published by BLOODAXE BOOKS, one of Grear Britain’s leading literary publishing outfits.HAMMERS AND HEARTS OF THE GODS was selected as a book of the year (2009) by the Morning Star (London). He won the Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award in 2010.
I first read with Fred at the University of Redlands in the spring of 1993, at a labor conference. My most recent reading wit him was at Page Against the Machine bookstore in Long Beach. I remember an even more recent reading where he was the featured reader; what a pleasure it was to hear the audience laugh repeatedly in response to the dry wit of his poems.I am pleased to recall that I was te one wo told Fred about BLUE COLLAR REVIEW, which is published by Partisan Press in Norfolk, Virginia. Both Fred and I has poems published in that magazine, which has remained defiant in its critique of class matters, no matter which political party assumes power.
Having Fred and Joan as poet-neighbors in Long Beach has helped sustain me for the past 18 years. Suddenly, I find myself far less tethered to the city than I ever thought I would feel.
BloodAxe Books is spot on in saying that the American literary establishment never honored him as a poet the way it should have. Such is not the case in Long Beach and not in Los Angeles, either. Here, he will remain a much admired comrade. I recommend BEAT NOT BEAT, an anthology edited by Rich Ferguson, S.A. Griffin, Alexis Rhone Fanhcer, and Kim Shuck, and published by Eric Morago’s MOONTIDE PRESS, as the most easily available book that will give a reader an immediate context for reading Fred’s work. He also appeared in two anthologies edited by Suzanne Lummis as well as Tia CHucha’s COILED SERPENT.
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1491
(Long Bewach Museum of Art)
(to be continued….)
About Bill Mohr