New Poems on the Underground Autumn 2023

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 from 26th October

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)

You can find the rest of our poems for this month here