This article presents an analysis of some one hundred poems written by workers and published in workplace periodicals between 1947 and 1990. The workplace periodicals considered in the paper were published in the region of Istria in Croatia. Taking Istrian periodicals allowed examining different sectors of the economy – the mining industry, shipbuilding industry, and tourism – in performing this regional case study. The literary material considered in the paper appeared in the historical context of the Yugoslav self-management system with vaguely defined cultural policies. The paper focuses on the relationship between culture and self-management as a political and theoretical idea, and the way in which artistic amateur practices appears in this context. The analysis starts with grouping the poems and finding common themes, motifs and rhetorical structure. This forms the foundation for cultural analyses and interpretations. The interpretations start with poems written in the local čakavian dialect, followed by reflective and love poetry, and ending with poems with dealing with the topic of work and the workplace. Based on the theoretical framework developed by Michel de Certeau, the analysis shows that there is a connection between economic, political and everyday self-management practices on the one hand and the production of a highly varied and heteroglossic poetry written by workers on the other.