Summer Poems on the Underground, June 2024
Our summer Poems on the Underground go live on London Underground and Overground cars on Monday June 3rd for four weeks. We are delighted to welcome the joys of summer and its special music with a truly international set of poems: a tribute to the great American jazz greats by the Ghanaian-British poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes; a 13th-century round, also known as the Cuckoo Song; a love poem by Azita Ghahreman, an Iranian poet writing in Persian; Don Paterson’s version of a sonnet to Orpheus by the great Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke; A E Housman’s lament from A Shropshire lad; and an extract from the late Benjamin Zephaniah’s celebration of our common origins as ‘refugees’.
The poems:
A Glimpse by Azita Ghahreman, translated from the Persian by Elhum Shakerifar and Maura Dooley Reprinted with permission from Negative of a Group Photograph (Poetry Translation Centre / Bloodaxe Books, 2018)
from We Refugees by Benjamin Zephaniah Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books from Wicked World (Puffin, 2000).
By Yourself, Boy. . . (1988-2007) by Nii Ayikwei Parkes Reprinted by permission of Peepal Tree Press from The Makings of You(2010)
The Isle of Portland by A.E. Housman, from A Shropshire Lad
‘Sumer is icumen in’ Anon 13 Century Music manuscript by permission of The British Library Board, BL Harley 978f.1.1v
Taste by Don Paterson Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber from Orpheus: A Version of Rilke’s ‘Die Sonette an Orpheus’ (2006)
A Glimpse by Azita Ghahreman, translated from the Persian by Elhum Shakerifar and Maura Dooley
A Glimpse read in Persian by Azita Ghahreman
A Glimpse by Azita Ghahreman read by Maura Dooley
from We Refugees by Benjamin Zephaniah
By Yourself, Boy. . . (1988-2007) by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
By Yourself Boy…. read by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
The Isle of Portland by A.E. Housman


The Isle of Portland by A.E. Housman read by Maura Dooley
‘Sumer is icumen in’ Anon


Sumer is Icumen in read by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Taste by Don Paterson