This Month’s Poems

This Month we feature Poems to Celebrate Pride, American Poems, African Poems on the Underground, Poems of Love and Hope and Musical Poems on the Underground

Look out for the New Summer Poems on the Underground on London Underground and Overground trains.

Our New free leaflet 40 Poems for 40 Years will be out soon !

Celebrating Pride

Two Fragments, Sappho (7th Century B.C.) translated by Cicely Herbert Poems on the Underground 1992 ' As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree I am rocked by my love. Love holds me captive again and I tremble with bittersweet longing.''
Hour, Carol Ann Duffy ‘Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.’
The Conversation of Old Men, Thom Gunn ‘He feels a breeze rise from the Thames, as far off as Rotherhithe, in intimate contact with water, slimy hulls,’
Longings by C.P. Cavafy ( 1863-1933) Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 'Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old, sadly shut away in sumptuous mausoleum, roses by the head, jasmine at the feet - so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of the granted a single night of pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.'
Leaf , Seán Hewitt from Tongues of Fire 'For woods are forms of grief grown from the earth. For they creak with the weight of it. For each tree is an altar to time. For the oak, whose every knot guards a hushed cymbal of water. For how the silver water holds the heavens in its eye. For the axletree of heaven and the sleeping coil of wind and the moon keeping watch. For how each leaf traps light as it falls. For even in the nighttime of life it is worth living, just to hold it.'
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, Adrienne Rich ' Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.'

American Poems on the Underground

Ragwort, Anne Stevenson 'They won't let railways alone, those yellow flowers. They're that remorseless joy of dereliction
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman (1819-92) 'Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west - sun there half an hour high - I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me that you suppose, And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose... ' POETRY IN MOTION Poems on the Underground The Transit Authority. Going Your way. In cooperation with the Poetry Society of America London/New York Poetry Exchange
Milton Kessler, Thanks Forever ' Look at those empty ships floating north between south-running ice like big tulips in the Narrows under the Verrazano toward the city harbour.'
World Poems on the Underground: Birch Canoe, Carter Revard. Red men embraced my body's whiteness, cutting into me carved it free,
Dream Boogie , Langston Hughes 'Good morning, daddy! Ain’t you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You’ll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a— You think It’s a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain’t you heard something underneath like a— What did I say? Sure, I’m happy! Take it away! Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!'
Much Madness is Divinest Sense, Emily Dickinson, Much Madness is divinest Sense- To a discerning Eye- Much Sense- the starkest Madness- 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, Prevail- Assent- and you are sane- Demur- you're straightway dangerous- And handled with a Chain-''

African Poems on the Underground

African Poems on the Underground I Sing of Change Niyi Osundare I sing of the beauty of Athens without its slaves
African Poems on the Underground: Season, Wole Soyinka. Rust is ripeness, rust And the wilted corn- plume
African Poems on the Underground Et nous baignerons mon amie Léopold Sédar Senghor, tr. Gerard Benson we shall be bathed, my love in the presence of Africa
African Poems on the Underground: Tin Roof: Nii Ayikwei Parkes. Wild harmattan winds whip you but still you stay;
African Poems on the Underground: Inside My Zulu Hut Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali. It is a hive without any bees to build the walls with golden bricks of honey.

African Poems on the Underground: from Poem to Her Daughter Mwana Kupona binti Msham. Daughter, take this amulet, tie it with cord and caring,

Poems of Love and Hope

Love Without Hope by Robert Graves

Love Without Hope, Robert Graves 'Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.'

Hope by Edith Södergran translated by Herbert Lomas

Hope by Edith Södergran (1892 - 1923) translated by Herbert Lomas' I want to let go - so I don't give a damn about fine writing, I'm rolling my sleeves up. The dough's rising ... Oh what a shame I can't bake cathedrals ... that sublimity of style I've always yearned for ... Child of our time - haven't you found the right shell for your soul? Before I die I shall bake a cathedral.'

Idyll by U.A. Fanthorpe

IDYLL by U.A. Fanthorpe (b. 1929) ' Not knowing even that we're on the way, Until suddenly we're there. How shall we know? There will be blackbirds, in a late March evening Blur of woodsmoke, whisky in grand glasses, A poem of yours, waiting to be read; and one of mine; A reflective bitch, a cat materialised On a knee. All fears of present and future Will be over, all guilts forgiven. Maybe, heaven. Or maybe We can get so far in this world. I'll believe we can. '

Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson

Love in a Bathtub by Sujata Bhatt

Love in a Bathtub, Sujata Bhatt ' Years later we'll remember the bathtub the position of the taps the water, slippery as if a bucketful of eels had joined us ... we'll be old, our children grown up but we'll remember the water sloshing out the useless soap, the mountain of wet towels. 'Remember the bathtub in Belfast?' we'll prod each other-'

First Fig by Edna St Vincent Millay

First Fig, Edna St. Vincent Millay 'My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah! my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light!'

Music Poems on the Underground

Music When Soft Voices Die by Percy Bysshe Shelley

To- P.B. Shelley 'Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory – Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.'

A Musical Note by Elizabeth Smart

A Musical Note, Elizabeth Smart ' Sometimes Handel is loud, triumphant, insistent. I wanted to say shut up! Can anything really be that successful and sure?'

from Tell Me the Truth About Love by W.H. Auden

lines from "Tell Me the Truth About Love" by W.H. Auden ' When it comes, will it come without warning Just as I'm picking my nose? Will it knock on my door in the morning, Or tread in the bus on my toes? Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.' W.H. Auden (1907 -73 By permission of Faber from Collected Poems, revised edition (2007) Music by Benjamin Britten is © Faber Music and the Trustees of the Britten - Pears Foundation and appears by permission

If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper by Charles Tomlinson

If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper, Charles Tomlinson ' If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper he would have heard all those notes suspended above one another in the air of his ear as the undifferentiated swarm returning to the exact hive to place in the hive, topping up the cells with the honey of C major, food for the listening generations, key to their comfort and solace of their distress as they return and return to those counterpointed levels of hovering wings where movement is dance and the air itself a scented garden'

Ode to Joy by Gillian Clarke

Bach and the Sentry by Ivor Gurney

Bach and the Sentry, Ivor Gurney 'Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood On that most dearest Prelude of my delight. The low-lying mist lifted its hood, The October stars showed nobly in clear night. When I return, and to real music-making, And play that Prelude, how will it happen then? Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking, With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?'

Naima for John Coltrane by Kamau Brathwaite

Naima for John Coltrane, Kamau Brathwaite 'Propped against the crowded bar he pours into the curved and silver horn his old unhappy longing for a home'

New Poems Summer 2026

New Poems February 2026

New Poems Autumn 2025

New Poems Summer 2025

New Poems Spring 2025

Poems from June 2026

Poems from May 2026

Poems from April 2026

Poems from March 2026

Poems from February 2026

Poems from January 2026

Poems from 2025

Poems from 2024

poems from 2023

poems from 2022

poems from 2021

Poems from 2020

Listen to Windrush Day Recordings

Love Poems Leaflet

February Poems Leaflet

War Poems on the Underground leaflet

Poems on the Underground at the Scottish Poetry Library