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.
Because there has been little commercial advertising on the Tube, poems displayed in 2020 have filled the Tube cars, to the delight of readers.
Our most recent set of Tube poems appeared in February, marking the bicentenary of London’s much loved poet, John Keats, who died in Rome, aged 25, on 24 February 1821.
The bicentenary is also marked on stations near where Keats lived and worked with a special display of posters at Hampstead Station and London Bridge Station
Keats wrote that he was convinced of one thing only: ‘the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.’ His words seem especially meaningful during this difficult time. We are delighted to be able to share his poems with the travelling public.
You can see our Poems to Celebrate Keats here
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