New Poems on the Underground February 2022

A new set of poems on love, music, and the coming of spring will be on London Underground trains from February 14th.

We hope tube travellers will enjoy poems by Sasha Dugdale, Derek Walcott, Grace Nichols, Martin Bell and Raymond Antrobus

We are also marking 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 speak to all of us: ‘O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

The poems will be circulating on Underground and Overground trains through February and March.

The poems featured in February:

Private Ownership by Sasha Dugdale Reprinted by permission of Carcanet from Notebook (2003)

Love after Love by Derek Walcott Reprinted by permission of Faber from Collected Poems (1986)

Praise Song for My Mother by Grace Nichols Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown from I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2010)

The Songs by Martin Bell Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Complete Poems (1988)

Upwards (forTy Chijioke) after Christopher Gilbert by Raymond Antrobus Reprinted by permission of Picador from All the Names Given (2021)

from Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley   

Private Ownership by Sasha Dugdale ' I belong to you And, I am not afraid to say it, You belong to me. I am a private owner, it could be said. I will not share you with the nation – Nor collectivise you. We will indulge in dangerous dissolution And luxury and harmful intelligence And sleep in our own skins And go scented and unrepentant To the airport at the end. ' Reprinted by permission of Carcanet from Notebook (2003)
Love after Love by Derek Walcott ' The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.' Reprinted by permission of Faber from Collected Poems (1986)
Praise Song for My Mother by Grace Nichols 'You were water to me deep and bold and fathoming You were moon’s eye to me pull and grained and mantling You were sunrise to me rise and warm and streaming You were the fishes red gill to me the flame tree’s spread to me the crab’s leg/the fried plantain smell replenishing replenishing Go to your wide futures, you said' Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown from I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2010)
The Songs by Martin Bell ' Continuous, a medley of old pop numbers – Our lives are like this. Three whistled bars Are all it takes to catch us, defenceless On a District Line platform, sullen to our jobs, And the thing stays with us all day, still dapper, still Astaire, Still fancy-free. We’re dreaming while we work. Be careful, keep afloat, the past is lapping your chin. South of the Border is sad boys in khaki In 1939. And J’attendrai a transit camp, Tents in the dirty sand. Don’t go back to Sorrento. Be brisk and face the day and set your feet On the sunny side always, the sunny side of the street ' Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Complete Poems (1988)
Upwards (for Ty Chijioke) after Christopher Gilbert by Raymond Antrobus ' The last place the sun reaches in my garden is the back wall where the ivy grows above the stinging nettles. What are they singing to us? Is it painless to listen? Will music soothe our anxious house? Speech falls on things like rain sun shades all the feelings of having a heart. Here, take my pulse, take my breath, take my arms as I drift off ' Reprinted by permission of Picador from All the Names Given (2021)
from Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley 'Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened Earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'

You can see the rest of our Poems for February 2022 here