Underground Poets is a loose label for British poets associated with countercultural, performance-led poetry outside the mainstream literary establishment, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is not the name of a single formal movement; it has been used for poets connected with small presses, readings, and politically charged, spoken styles, including figures such as Adrian Mitchell, Tom Pickard, Heathcote Williams, Michael Horovitz, and the Liverpool poets.
Example
Night buses hiss past the docks,
while we read on borrowed stages,
our words passed hand to hand
like leaflets in the rain.