Poems on the Underground

Tony Harrison RIP

The Morning After (August 1945), Tony Harrison ' The fire left to itself might smoulder weeks. Phone cables melt. Paint peels from off back gates. Kitchen windows crack; the whole street reeks of horsehair blazing. Still it celebrates.'

Poems on the Underground Celebrating Black History Month

Free, Merle Collins 'Born free to be caught and fashioned and shaped and freed to wander within a caged dream of tears'

Free written and read by Merle Collins

We are pleased to share recordings of many of the poems in our Black History Month Leaflet

Listen to all the Black History Month Recordings

Read our Black History Month Leaflet

Poems on the Underground Celebrating Windrush Day

Listen to Windrush Day Recordings

Poems by Kwame Dawes, Jean Binta Breeze, Lemn Sissay, Roger Robinson, James Berry, Lorna Goodison, Valerie Bloom, Louise Bennett, Benjamin Zephaniah, Andrew Salkey, Derek Walcott recorded for Poems on the Underground

Windrush Child (for Vince Reid, at 13 the youngest passenger on the Empire Windrush) Behind you Windrush child palm trees wave goodbye above you Windrush child seabirds asking why around you Windrush child blue water rolling by beside you Windrush child your Windrush mum and dad think of storytime yard and mango mornings and new beginnings doors closing and opening John Agard Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009)

New Poems on the Underground June 2025

Daughter I ask her to remember, not because I want to hear the story again, but because I want to watch her face relive the moment. That moment, her eyes sparkle with longing, I can see how she flies from the tent to a time when she leapt through our farm in every direction with eyes closed, only stopping at the fence, where our orange trees embrace our neighbours’ olive trees. Some fallen oranges would tell her to open her eyes, to pick them up and put them in a plate at our doorstep, where children returning from school would stop to gulp some. I love the smell of oranges best when she remembers. Mosab Abu Toha Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins from Forest of Noise (4th Estate 2024)

Genesis then god said let me make man in my image man in my likeness man like me man like light and man like dark let man nyam and chop whatever be good god said give man arm to skank leg to shake tongue and chest to speak with give man cash to spray put man’s face on it said give man sea and sky and trees and zones one to six on the oyster so man can see it now man said rah swear down man said show me Gboyega Odubanjo Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber from Adam (2024) © The Estate of Gboyega Odubanjo, 2024

The summer Poems on the Underground go live on Underground and Overground trains on June 2^nd with poems by the British-Nigerian poet Dr. Gboyega Odubanjo, the South Korean poet Jeongrye Choi ,Chinese poet Po Chu-i’, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, William Shakespeare and Young Poet on the Underground, Anna Gilmore Heezen

25th April 1974, Sophie de Mello Breyner tr.Ruth Fainlight, 'This is the dawn I was waiting for The first day whole and pure When we emerged from night and silence Alive into the substance of time'

Poems on the Underground Celebrating World Poetry Day 2025

We celebrate World Poetry Day with recordings by Poets Niyi Osundare, Valerie Bloom, Niall Campbell, Merle Collins, Dawn Sands, Cyril Wong, Ian Duhig, John Glenday, Helen Ivory, Kerry Shawn Keys, Marjorie Lotfi, Jason Salkey, Connie Bensley, Danielle Hope, Ruth Padel, Brian O’ Connor and Nick Makoha

Listen to all the World Poetry Day recordings

Poetry speaks to our common humanity and our shared values, transforming the simplest of poems into a powerful catalyst for dialogue, thought and peace.

I Sing of Change Niyi Osundare I sing of the beauty of Athens without its slaves Of a world free of kings and queens and other remnants of an arbitrary past

I Sing of Change read by Niyi Osundare

New Poems on the Underground February 2025

Love by George Herbert

Love LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything. ‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’ Love said, ‘You shall be he.’ ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on Thee.’ Love took my hand and smiling did reply, ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ ‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve.’ ‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’ ‘My dear, then I will serve.’ ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’ So I did sit and eat. George Herbert

‘O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

On 24^th February, the latest series of Poems on the Underground will be launched on London Underground and Overground trains. The poems are a strongly international set, with poems by the dissident Chinese poet Bei Dao, the Indian poet Sujata Bhatt, and the Chinese-American poet Li-Young Lee. Also featured are the Scottish poet Niall Campbell and the Foyle Young Poet Lewis Corry, alongside the great 17th century religious poet George Herbert. The poems share common themes as they celebrate new life and the renewal of nature as spring returns.

The poems:

Love by George Herbert

February Morning by Niall Campbell Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Noctuary (2019)

Ther is No Rose of Swych Virtu by Sujata Bhatt Reprinted by permission of Carcanet from Collected Poems (2013)

2013, and Daedalus never moved away for work by Lewis Corry, Foyle Young Poets

Michael Longley RIP

Harmonica by Michael Longley read by Ian Duhig

Green the land of my poem, Mahmoud Darwish ‘Green the land of my poem is green and high Slowly I tell it slowly with the grace of a seagull riding the waves on the book of water I bequeath it written down to the one who asks to whom shall we sing when salt poisons the dew?’

from In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poems on the Underground 1000 years of poetry in English 1999 'Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.'

I Sing of Change read by Niyi Osundare

African Poems on the Underground I Sing of Change Niyi Osundare I sing of the beauty of Athens without its slaves

Autumn Poems on the Underground, October 2024

Our autumn Poems on the Underground go live on London Underground and Overground cars on Monday, October 21st^,for four weeks. Fleur Adcock (1934-2024) celebrated her 90th birthday in February with the publication of her Collected Poems. Her poem Immigrant was one of the earliest Poems on the Underground in 1987 and we are pleased to have her poem Dragonfly in our autumn Poems on the Underground

We are delighted to include poems by Foyle Young Poets Arthur Lawson and Dawn Sands, as well as international poems by the late American writer Raymond Carver, the South African poet Gabeba Baderoon, and the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam.

Fleur Adcock RIP

Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock In the next life I should like to be for one perpetual day a dragonfly: a series of blue-green flashes over Lily Tarn, a contraption of steel and cellophane whose only verbs are dart, skim, hover. One day is enough to remember. Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Collected Poems (2024)

Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock read by Cyril Wong

Immigrant, Fleur Adcock 'November '63: eight months in London. I pause on the low bridge to watch the pelicans:'

Fleur Adcock reads Immigrant

Poems Celebrating Black History Month

Dew, Kwame Dawes ' This morning I took the dew from the broad leaf of the breadfruit tree, and washed the sleep from my eyes.

Dew read by Kwame Dawes

Poems on the Underground Black History Month Leaflet

We are delighted to mark Black History Month with a selection of poems by Black poets with close links to the UK, Europe, the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Africa. The poets include Nobel Prize-winners, poet laureates and performance artists, all reflecting in different ways on their individual experience.

Poems on the Underground at the Scottish Poetry Library

A selection of Poems on the Underground posters featuring poets from Scotland and beyond will be on display at the Scottish Poetry Library during the 2024 Edinburgh Festival.

The exhibition is free to visit during opening hours and will run until early autumn.

The Loch Ness Monster's Song, Edwin Morgan 'Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnflhfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl'

The Loch Ness Monster’s song by Edwin Morgan read by Gerard Benson

Poems on the Underground Celebrating Windrush Day

Poems on the Underground Celebrating World Refugee Day

Let a Place be Made by Yves Bonnefoy translated by Anthony Rudolf

Qu'une place soit faite... Let a Place be Made by Yves Bonnefoy (b.1923) Translated by Anthony Rudolf 'Let a place be made for the one who draws near, The one who is cold, deprived of any home, Tempted by the sound of a lamp, by the lit Threshold of a solitary house. And if he is still exhausted, full of anguish, Say again for him those words that heal. What does this heart which once was silence need If not those words which are both sign and prayer, Like a fire caught sight of in the sudden night, Like the table glimpsed in a poor house?'

John Burnside RIP

A Private Life by John Burnside ' I want to drive home in the dusk of some late afternoon, the journey slow, the tractors spilling hay, the land immense and bright, like memory, the pit towns smudges of graphite, their names scratched out for good: Lumphinnans; Kelty. I want to see the darkened rooms, the cups and wireless sets, the crimson lamps across the playing fields, the soft men walking home through streets and parks, and quiet women, coming to their doors, then turning away, their struck lives gathered around them.'

New summer Poems on the Underground

Look out for our New Poems on the Underground on London Underground and Overground trains throughout June. We are delighted to welcome the joys of summer with a selection of summer poems that celebrate our common humanity.

‘Sumer is icumen in’ Sumer is icumen in Loud sing cuckoo! Groweth seed and bloweth mead And springeth the wood now, Sing cuckoo! Ewe bleateth after lamb, Cow loweth after calf, Bullock starteth, buck farteth, Merry sing cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo! Well singest thou cuckoo, Nor cease thou never now! Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo! Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo now! Anon (13th century) Music manuscript by permission of The British Library Board, BL Harley 978f.1.1v

Poems on the Underground Celebrating May Day

On May Morning by John Milton

Song: On May Morning, John Milton Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail bounteous May that dost inspire Mirth and youth and warm desire! Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long.'

Poems on the Underground Celebrating World Poetry Day 2024

Poets Cyril Wong, Jo Clement, John Glenday, Helen Ivory, Ian Duhig, Paula Meehan, Kerry Shawn Keys, George Szirtes, John Hegley, Imtiaz Dharker, Maura Dooley, Valerie Bloom, Seni Seneviratne and Marjorie Lotfi reading favourite poems from Poems on the Underground

Poetry speaks to our common humanity and our shared values, transforming the simplest of poems into a powerful catalyst for dialogue, thought and peace.

You took away all the oceans and all the room, Osip Mandelstam ' You took away all the oceans and all the room. You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.'

You took away all the oceans and all the room by Osip Mandelstam read by Cyril Wong

Poems on the Underground Celebrating St Patrick’s Day

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B.Yeats

Listen to Maura Dooley reading He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Poems on the Underground Celebrating International Women’s Day

Dreamer by Jean Binta Breeze

dreamer, Jean Binta Breeze 'roun a rocky corner by de sea seat up pon a drif wood yuh can fine she gazin cross de water a stick eena her han tryin to trace a future in de san'

Poems on the Underground archive donated to Cambridge University Library

The Poems on the Underground archive – which includes hundreds of posters, and letters from some of the greatest poets of the past century – has been donated to Cambridge University Library, home to the archives of Siegfried Sassoon, Anne Stevenson and other renowned poets.

The Poems on the Underground collection has been catalogued and is available for consultation at Cambridge University Library by anyone interested in seeing it.

The Weight of the World by Seni Seneviratne Oh, how they blew like vast sails in the breeze, my mother’s wet sheets, pegged hard to the rope of her washing line. There was always hope of dry weather and no need for a please or thanks between us as we hauled them down. Whether to make the fold from right to left or left to right, to tame the restless heft? My job to know. I won’t call it a dance but there were steps to learn and cues to read, the give and take of fabric passed like batons in a relay race. She was my due north. Her right hand set west, mine tracing the east, we closed the distance, calmed the wayward weight, bringing order to the billowing world.

Our first set of Poems on the Underground in 2024 goes live on London Underground and Overground cars from 26 February throughout March. As Spring approaches, the common theme is LOVE — of persons and places, welcomed, scorned, remembered, rediscovered. We’re also marking the bicentenary of Lord Byron, the great Romantic poet who died in Missolonghi in 1824. Emily Bronte, another free spirit, is also featured.

New Spring Poems on the Underground

The poems are:

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron

Riches I hold in light esteem by Emily Bronte

Packing for America by Marjorie Lotfi Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Wrong Person to Ask (2023)

The Weight of the World by Seni Seneviratne Reprinted by permission of Peepal Tree Press from Unknown Soldier (2019)

Bridled Vows by Ian Duhig Reprinted by permission of Picador from New and Selected Poems (2021)

Love Poems on the Underground Promise Jackie Kay. Remember, the time of year when the future appears like a blank sheet of paper

Benjamin Zephaniah RIP

The London Breed I love dis great polluted place Where pop stars come to live their dreams Here ravers come for drum and bass And politicians plan their schemes, The music of the world is here Dis city can play any song They came to here from everywhere Tis they that made dis city strong. A world of food displayed on streets Where all the world can come and dine On meals that end with bitter sweets And cultures melt and intertwine, Two hundred languages give voice To fifteen thousand changing years And all religions can rejoice With exiled souls and pioneers. Benjamin Zephaniah Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Too Black Too Strong (2001)

New Autumn Poems on the Underground

We are delighted to offer tube travellers a new autumn set of Poems on the Underground with poems by Seamus Heaney, Garous Abdolmalekian tr. Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Anthony Joseph, Helen Ivory, Charles Simic and Karl Shapiro.

Look out for the new set of Poems on the Underground on London Underground and Overground trains

Axe by Anthony Joseph Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury from Sonnets for Albert (2022)

Anthony Joseph is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His Sonnets for Albert is the winner of the 2023 T S Eliot Prize.

Axe by Anthony Joseph My father, God bless his axe. He grooved deep in pitch pine. He spun his charm like bachelor galvanise in hurricane. Once I saw him peep through torrential rain like a saint at a killing. And when the wind broke his cassava trees, and the water overcame his eight-track machine, and his clothes were swept away in the flood, his Hail Mary fell upon a fortress of bone. So he crossed his chest with appointed finger and hissed a prayer in glossolalic verse. He may grand-charge and growl but he woundeth not, nor cursed the storm that Papa God send to wash away the wish of him and every dream he built. Anthony Joseph Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury from Sonnets for Albert (2022)

In a Loaning by Seamus Heaney Reprinted by permission of Faber from District and Circle (2006)

‘It delights me that ‘The Loaning’ might work for you. It’s a strange wee thing, which is why I trust it, but it might be, for the travellers, ‘a puzzle-the-world.’ (Seamus Heaney writing about ‘In a Loaning’, which he wrote when recovering from a stroke).

In a Loaning by Seamus Heaney Spoken for in autumn, recovered speech Having its way again, I gave a cry: ‘Not beechen green, but these shin-deep coffers Of copper-fired leaves, these beech boles grey.’ Seamus Heaney Reprinted by permission of Faber from District and Circle (2006) Loaning: a lane (Ulster-Scots) boles: tree trunks

from Elegy for a Dead Soldier by Karl Shapiro

Reprinted by permission of University of Illinois Press from The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late (1998)

Karl Shapiro was an American Poet laureate and won a number of major poetry awards in the 1940s, including the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Academy of Arts and Letters Grant, and the Contemporary Poetry Prize

from Elegy for a Dead Soldier by Karl Shapiro We ask for no statistics of the killed, For nothing political impinges on This single casualty, or all those gone, Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed, Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost. More than an accident and less than willed Is every fall, and this one like the rest. However others calculate the cost, To us the final aggregate is one, One with a name, one transferred to the blest; And though another stoops and takes the gun, We cannot add the second to the first. Karl Shapiro Reprinted by permission of University of Illinois Press from The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late (1998)

Long Exposure by Garous Abdolmalekian Translated from Persian by Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh Reprinted by permission of Penguin from Lean Against This Late Hour (2020).

Garous Abdolmalekian is an Iranian poet living in Tehran. He is the author of five poetry books and the recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize

Long Exposure by Garous Abdolmalekian Translated from Persian by Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh Even after letting go of the last bird I hesitate There is something in this empty cage that never gets released Garous Abdolmalekian Translated from Persian by Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh Reprinted by permission of Penguin from Lean Against This Late Hour (2020)

The Square of the Clockmaker by Helen Ivory Reprinted by permission of SurVision from Maps of the Abandoned City, SurVision Books (2019)

Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist, the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Anatomical Venus.

The Square of the Clockmaker by Helen Ivory When the last train left, the tunnel rolled the train track back into its mouth and slept. Clocks unhitched themselves from the made-up world of timetables and opened wide their arms. And in the square of the clockmaker a century of clocks turned their faces to the sun. Helen Ivory Reprinted by permission of SurVision Books From Maps of the Abandoned City (2019)

Empires by Charles Simic Reprinted by permission of Faber from Selected Poems 1963-2003 (2004)

Charles Simic (1938-2023) was a distinguished Serbian-American poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN International prize for translation. Seamus Heaney said of his writing that it “comes dancing out on the balls of its feet, colloquially fit as a fiddle, a sparring partner for the world” – a poem in itself.

Empires by Charles Simic My grandmother prophesied the end Of your empires, O fools! She was ironing. The radio was on. The earth trembled beneath our feet. One of your heroes was giving a speech. ‘Monster,’ she called him. There were cheers and gun salutes for the monster. ‘I could kill him with my bare hands,’ She announced to me. There was no need to. They were all Going to the devil any day now. ‘Don’t go blabbering about this to anyone,’ She warned me. And pulled my ear to make sure I understood. Charles Simic Reprinted by permission of Faber from Selected Poems 1963-2003 (2004)

Louise Glück RIP

The Undertaking by Louise Glück 'The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime. There you are - cased in clean bark you drift through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton. You are free. The river films with lilies, shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now all fear gives way: the light looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill as arms widen over the water; Love, the key is turned. Extend yourself - it is the Nile, the sun is shining, everywhere you turn is luck.'

Celebrating Black History Month

We are delighted to mark Black History Month with an expanded selection of poems by Black poets with close links to the UK, Europe, the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Africa. The poets include Nobel Prize-winners, poet laureates and performance artists, all reflecting in different ways on their individual experience.

We hope you enjoy the wonderful range, artistry and continued relevance of these poems. All the poems in this collection have been featured on London Underground cars, reaching an estimated three million daily travellers in this most international of cities

Look out for our new Black History Month available free at London Underground and Overground stations in October. The new leaflet includes a selection of poems that have featured on London Underground since 2020, along with all the poems that were in our Black History Month Leaflet in 2020.

You can find our Black History Month Leaflet here

Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Seamus Heaney was a great fan of our programme and a dear friend. He died ten years ago, in August 2013.

‘The Railway Children’ was one of the first poems we displayed on tube cars almost 40 years ago, in January 1986.

The Railway Children, Seamus Heaney ' When we climbed the slopes of the cutting We were eye-level with the white cups Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.' '

Listen to Seamus Heaney reading ‘The Railway Children’ in a recording from The Poetry Archive

Celebrating Pride

Hour by Carol Ann Duffy

Hour, Carol Ann Duffy ‘Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.’

Celebrating Windrush 75

A Dream of Leavin by James Berry

A dream of leavin, James Berry ' Man, so used to notn, this is a dream I couldn't dream of dreamin so - I scare I might wake up. One day I would be Englan bound! A travel would have me on sea not chained down below, every tick of clock, but free, man! Free like tourist! Never see me coulda touch world of Englan - when from all accounts I hear that is where all we prosperity end up. I was always in a dream of leavin. My half-finished house was on land where work-laden ancestors' bones lay. The old plantation land still stretch-out down to the sea, giving grazing to cattle.'

This summer Poems on the Underground marks the 75^th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush in Britain, bringing men, women and children from the Caribbean to help rebuild a war-ravaged country.

British poetry has gained immeasurably from the contribution of Caribbean and Black British voices of the most eloquent, wide-ranging and diverse kinds, reaching the widest possible audience. We are happy to join the Windrush 75 network in celebrating our common humanity.

From June 19^th through July, London Underground and Overground cars will feature poets with close Caribbean and British links

Look out for our new set of Summer poems on London Underground and Overground trains from June 19th.

You can see our new poems for Summer 2023 here

James Berry, ‘Sea-Song One’ from Windrush Songs, in The Story I Am In: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2011)

John Agard, ‘Windrush Child’ (for Vince Reid, the youngest passenger on the Windrush, then aged 13), from Alternative Anthem (Bloodaxe Books 2009)

Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘The London Breed’ from Too Black, Too Strong (Bloodaxe Books 2001)

Louise Bennett, ‘Colonization in Reverse’ from Jamaica Labrish (1966)

Kei Miller, ‘The only thing far away’ from There Is an Anger that Moves (Carcanet 2007)

Grace Nichols, ‘Bourda’ from Passport to Here and There (Bloodaxe Books 2020)

Poems on the Underground Celebrates World Poetry Day

A huge thank you to the poets who have recorded poems for Poems on the Underground to celebrate World Poetry Day.

You can hear all the recordings here World Poetry Day Recordings

Paula Meehan, Irish poet and playwright, reads her poem ‘Seed’, perfect for this time of year

Seed by Paula Meehan 'The first warm day of spring and I step out into the garden from the gloom of a house where hope had died to tally the storm damage, to seek what may have survived. And finding some forgotten lupins I’d sown from seed last autumn holding in their fingers a raindrop each like a peace offering, or a promise, I am suddenly grateful and would offer a prayer if I believed in God. But not believing, I bless the power of seed, its casual, useful persistence, and bless the power of sun, its conspiracy with the underground, and thank my stars the winter’s ended.'

Seed read by Paula Meehan

Truth by Geoffrey Chaucer ' Flee from the press and dwell with truthfulness; Let what you have suffice though it be small. For greed brings hate and climbing trickiness; Fame means envy and wiles blind us all. Enjoy no more than what is right for thee. Rule yourself well if you would others rule, And sure it is that truth shall set you free. Fle fro the prees, & dwelle with sothefastnesse. Suffyce thin owen thing though it be smal. For horde hath hate & clymbyng tykelnesse – Press hath envye & wile blent overal. Savour no more thanne thee bihove schal. Reule wel thyselfe that other folk canst rede, And trouthe shal delyvere it is no drede. British Library MS 10340 by permission of The British Library Board

Poetry offers hope and a voice to speak in difficult times.

I Sing of Change by Niyi Osundare

You took away all the oceans and all the room by Osip Mandelstam

’25 February 1944′ by the poet Primo Levi translated by Eleonora Chiavetta

25 February 1944 Primo Levi tr. Eleonora Chiavetta ' I wish I could believe in something beyond, Beyond the death that has undone you. I wish I could tell of the strength With which we longed then, Already drowned, To walk together once again Free under the sun.'

Jean Binta Breeze RIP

A Picture for Tiantian’s fifth birthday by Bei Dao translated by Bonnie S. McDougal and Chen Maiping

A Picture for Tiantian's fifth birthday by Bei Dao (b. 1949)Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping 'A Picture for Tiantian's fifth birthday Morning arrives in a sleeveless dress apples tumble all over the earth my daughter is drawing a picture how vast is a five-year-old sky your name has two windows one opens towards a sun with no clock-hands the other opens towards your father who has become a hedgehog in exile taking with him a few unintelligible characters and a bright red apple he has left your painting how vast is a five-year-old sky' Tiantian, the nickname given to the poet's daughter, is written with two characters which look like a pair of windows. Written in exile after Tienanmen Square Reprinted from Old Snow (Anvil, 1992)

Poems on the Underground has been offering poetry to London’s tube travellers for thirty five years. You can read some of our favourite poems here, displayed in their original posters. We shall be regularly adding more poems from our collection, verses new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, serious and comic. We hope you will enjoy poems which have entertained millions of London commuters, inspiring similar programmes across the world.

You can see our new poems for Summer 2023 here

You can see our New Poems for Spring 2023 here

New Poems on the Underground February 2023

As we mark the 160^th anniversary of London Underground, a new set of Poems on the Underground went live on London Underground and Overground cars on Monday 27 February 2023, for four weeks.

Londoners were greeted by a favourite Shakespearean heroine, Perdita, as she welcomes the flowers of spring: ‘Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty’ – from The Winter’s Tale.

Chaucer appeared alongside Shakespeare in his ballad Truth (‘Flee from the press and dwell with truthfulness’) – as relevant today as it was in the 14^th century.

Four poets new to the tube were also featured, in poems of love, separation and exile:

What I know of the sea by İlhan Sami Çomak , a Kurdish poet writing from a Turkish prison, where he has been held for 29 years. His poems are translated by Caroline Stockford. ‘What I know of love is so little! Yet I’m constantly thinking of you!’

Bond by Diana Anphimiadi, a Georgian poet of Greek ancestry, translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Jean Sprackland: ‘When I leave, your words follow – you are mine! You know I’ll always come back.’

For My Wife, Reading in Bed by the Scottish poet John Glenday: ‘What else do we have but words and their absences / to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart?’

[Clearance] by the Zambian-born British poet Kayo Chingonyi, a light-hearted take on dispossession: ‘What need have we for these ornaments, old textbooks, the wedding dress you never wore?’

Our New Poems for Autumn 2022 were on London Underground trains in November.

You can see our new set of poems for autumn 2022 here

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

We are delighted to offer tube travellers a new autumn set of poems on the theme of our interconnectedness to the natural world, to our families and to the wider world

The poems circulated on London Underground and Overground trains for 4 weeks from November 7th.

To end our celebration of the bicentenary of Shelley’s death, we feature the first stanza of his greatest poem Ode to the West Wind.

Included too are Jackie Kay’s warm tribute to her parents as they set off for yet another anti-war protest and poems by four poets new to our programme, Jo Clement, Romalyn Ante, Kerry Shawn Keys and Cyril Wong

You can see our new set of poems for Summer 2022 here

‘My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings:

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

We are delighted to offer tube travellers a new summer set of poems.

The poems circulated on London Underground and Overground trains for 4 weeks from July 18th.

Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, inspired by the Egyptian ruins at the British Museum, marks the bicentenary of the poet’s death on July 8^th, 1822, aged 29.

Our international theme continues with famous lines by the 17^th century Dean of St Pauls, John Donne: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself…’

Also featured: ‘Caterpillar’ by Guillaume Apollinaire, in a new version by the British poet and translator Robert Chandler.

An extract from War of the Beasts and the Animals by the dissident Russian poet Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale.

‘Ditches’ by the Irish poet Jessica Traynor.

‘Dei Miracole’ by the popular poet, playwright and broadcaster Lemn Sissay.

Our first set of poems in 2022 was circulating on Underground and Overground trains through February and March, with poems on love, music, and the coming of spring by Sasha Dugdale, Derek Walcott, Grace Nichols, Martin Bell and Raymond Antrobus.

We also introduced our year-long celebration of the bicentenary of the death of the Romantic poet P B Shelley with the last stanza of his Ode to the West Wind, with famous lines which resonate powerfully at this time: ‘O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

You can see our new set of poems for Spring 2022 here

A new set of poems circled London Underground trains throughout November 2021. Poems by the Scottish makar Jackie Kay and the distinguished Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson celebrate the enduring value of our closest human relationships. And well-loved poems by Keats and Hopkins, alongside new poems by Laurel Prizewinners Seán Hewitt and Sean Borodale, remind us of the glory and fragility of the natural world.

You can see our Autumn 2021 set of Poems on the Underground here

Our recent set of poems by an international range of poets was on London Underground cars throughout the summer of 2021

You can see our Summer 2021 set of Poems on the Underground here

In 2021 we also marked the bicentenary of London’s much -loved poet, John Keats, with a special display of posters at Hampstead Station and London Bridge Station

You can see our Poems to Celebrate Keats here

Listen to our World Poetry Day Recordings

You can download a copy of our Black History Month Leaflet here

You can download a copy of our London Poems on the Underground leaflet here

You can download a copy of our World Poems Leaflet here

You can see our War Poems on the Underground leaflet here

You can see our February Poems on the Underground leaflet here