American poet Philip Levine has died aged 87. He was widely known here as a poet of the working class. He was a "large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland”, according to Edward Hirsch, largely because of his poems penned in praise of industrial workers, his birthplace being Detroit, home of the American motor industry in whose factories he worked from the age of 14 before going on to take classes in writing at the University of Iowa, then teaching at Universities of California, Princeton, Columbia and others.

Working class struggles were a persistent theme as he aimed to “find a voice for the voiceless”. He said that his native city “became the arena of my discovery of the nature of American capitalism and the sense of how ordinary people have no choice at all in how they're going to be formed by society. My politics were formed by the city."

As well as being US poet laureate from 2011-12 (they tend to serve one-year stints), he won the Pulitzer prize for The Simple Truth in 1995 and two national Book Awards for What Work Is (1991) and Ashes: Poems New and Old (1980).

In one interview he said he was the first of his family to go to college, and described the embarrassment of his ignorance of such things. As he queued to enrol he was asked, 'Do you want a bachelor’s?' He replied that, no, he already had somewhere to live, only knowing bachelor’s as a small flat. He went on to gain a bachelor’s and masters degrees and was emeritus professor of English at California State University, Fresno, at his death.

He also wrote about 1930s Spanish anarchists and Spain’s civil war, having known anti-fascists who joined the fight, some of whom did not return.

His poem ‘What Work’ Is can be heard here. Click on Listen to the story.

Philip Levine, born January 10, 1928, died February 14, 2015

PHOTOGRAPH: THE POETRY FOUNDATION