To mark Armistice Day, we are featuring poems displayed on the underground to commemorate the First World War, and touching on wars from the earliest times to the present.
We hope readers will be moved by these poets writing at first hand about their experience of the war, and in different ways expressing comradeship, love of country, despair and even hope
All of these poems can be found in our War Poems on the Underground leaflet here
Look out for our new set of Poems on the Underground on London Underground trains from 7th November
We are delighted to offer tube travellers a new autumn set of poems which show how interconnected we are, to the natural world, to our families and to the wider world.
To end our celebration of the bicentenary of Shelley’s death, we feature the first stanza of his greatest poem Ode to the West Wind. Included too are Jackie Kay’s warm tribute to her parents as they set off for yet another anti-war protest and poems by four poets new to our programme, Jo Clement, Romalyn Ante, Kerry Shawn Keys and Cyril Wong.
New Poems on the Underground
from Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley
George Square by Jackie Kay
Paisley by Jo Clement
from Invisible Women by Romalyn Ante
Vesper by Kerry Shawn Keys
Crow by Cyril Wong
War Poems on the Underground
August 1914 by Isaac Rosenberg
In Time of the Breaking of Nations by Thomas Hardy
La Petite Auto / The Little Car by Guillaume Apollinaire
Im Osten / In the East by Georg Trakl translated by David Constantine
Lost in France by Ernest Rhys
Letter to André Billy 9 April 1915 by Guillaume Apollinaire translated by Oliver Bernard
Fratelli/ Brothers by Giuseppe Ungaretti translated by Patrick Creagh
Harmonica by Michael Longley
Bach and the Sentry by Ivor Gurney
The General by Siegfried Sassoon
1915 I know the truth – give up all other truths! by Maria Tsvetaeva translated by Elaine Feinstein
In Memoriam (Easter 1915) by Edward Thomas
Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
A Dead Statesman by Rudyard Kipling
Grass by Carl Sandburg
Maire Macrae’s Song by Kathleen Raine
Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon
Accordionist by George Szirtes
The Long War by Laurie Lee
Inscription for a War by A. D. Hope
Passing-Bells by Carol Ann Duffy
They are Not Long by Ernest Dowson
The Sunburst by Michael Longley
And they shall beate their swords into plow-shares Isiah 2.4, King James Bible
You can see our poems displayed in October 2022 here