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.
The poems:
Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Collected Poems (2024) Fleur Adcock, who died this October at the age of ninety was one of the most important poets of the last sixty years from her first book, The Eye of the Hurricane that was published in 1964 in her native New Zealand, all her subsequent books being published in the UK, down to her Collected Poems of 2024, a book from which she had a chance to read in Newcastle shortly before her death. Her poetry is marked by a crisp, ironic clarity, her voice is essentially that of ordinary speech. That precision is beautifully marked in her poem Dragonfly that speaks of personal longing but lodges that longing in the image of a dragonfly.
Late Fragment by Raymond Carver Reprinted by permission of Vintage from All of Us: Collected Poems (1997) The poet Raymond Carver who died all too early at fifty, is equally known for his much loved short stories. Late Fragment is indeed a late poem that speaks directly and movingly about that which concerns all of us.
Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head— by Osip Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Andrew Davis Reprinted by permission of New York Review Books from Osip Mandelstam, Voronezh Notebooks (2016). The Voronezh Notebooks were written in exile between 1935 and 1937. Mandelstam died in 1938, sentenced to hard labour for writing anti-Stalin poems. The poems of Osip Mandelstam bear witness to the conditions of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Hs poems have a classical grace but also the humour that eventually led to his arrest. This poem, like the others in Voronezh Notebooks is untitled. It reflects on the freedom of the perfectly seen goldfinch as from captivity. The translation hints at Mandelstam’s formality but also at the poignantly colloquial fashion of addressing the free creature.
Always for the First Time by Gabeba Baderoon Reproduced with the permission of Kwela, an imprint of NB Publishers from The Dream in the Next Body (2005). Gabeba Baderoon (born 1968) is a multi-prize winning poet and scholar from South Africa. Always for the First Time is a particularly appropriate poem for our own time of conflict and how shockingly fresh war appears each time to us whose memories are ‘innocent as eggs’.
Anglerfish by Arthur Lawson. Arthur is a 19-year-old poet from Northamptonshire. In 2023, Arthur was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. The fish Arthur Lawson is referring to, the Anglerfish, is a deep-sea inhabitant, a luminous predator with wide mouth and sharp jagged teeth. But the poem does not refer us to horror but to a ‘perfect improbable silence’ where ‘everything is bright and dim / and possible’. It is an exhilarating image of discovery.
Epilogue by Dawn Sands. Dawn is a 17-year-old poet from Portsmouth. In 2023, Dawn was a winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award one of the biggest poetry competitions in the world for young people. The poem is about the excitement of a schoolgirl friendship between two ten-year-olds. The hope of sustaining that new friendship is concentrated in the image of two clouds converging in a clap of thunder. It is a vivid memory of childhood love as something desperately needed.
Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock
Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head— by Osip Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Andrew Davis
Always for the First Time by Gabeba Baderoon
Anglerfish by Arthur Lawson
Epilogue by Dawn Sands
