You can get an interesting sampler by picking up a recent Best American Poetry and looking at the bios in the back. Some are academics, but there are also doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so forth. I had a long-running project which attempted to rank graduate creative writing programs by their alumni’s appearances in the prize anthologies and one interesting byproduct was collecting a lot of author bios. I think the bios for those who I could confirm had no graduate creative writing degree or could not find evidence of one were the most interesting.
I love this response. The beauty of claiming one’s art with a confident but plain “I” and then following with a clear and concise answer.
How do you view your day job? As a necessary evil to pay the bills? As a good “real world” counterweight to the arts? I ask in good faith and genuine curiosity as I am likewise drawn to the arts but have over the years come to appreciate how my tech career keeps my feet planted on the ground.
I find myself grateful I can support my family financially, as it's statistically unlikely my art can ever permit me to quit my day job.
Not to imply that it's in any way a quality peculiar to those who write poetry in their free time (I know it isn't), but my need for creative expression regularly seeps into the coding standards to which I hold myself, insofar as I demand a certain beauty-- such as such a thing is ever even possible-- out of the libraries I write.
I know/knew a few, they usually balance things like teaching, magazine writing, maintaining social media accounts for brands, copywriting for ads, and tech jobs.
