A good, long-standing friend of mine is from Liverpool.
Highly educated, he is in and out of work as a translator for various publishers.
He is also, by his own choice, a performance poet with several (cheap production) compilation books. He does open-mike performances around London when he can, but as he says "It's not going to be a living".
I can guess his politics (I know him well) but it's never entered into any conversation.
Some people are poets in the same way some are writers, artists, influencers, sculptors etc. Some people, of course, lie. It's all down to image. Are they artists or do they want the image of being an artist?