Poems on the Underground


News and Events

Tuesday July 8th, 7.30pm, St Giles Cripplegate 

Poems on the Underground will be reading from Milton’s works in St Giles Cripplegate, the City church where Milton is buried.  Musical settings of Milton’s poems, by Henry Lawes, Handel, and others will be performed by Lorna Anderson, soprano, Richard Edgar-Wilson, tenor, and the Apollo Chamber Orchestra, conducted by David Chernaik.

Promoted by the Barbican Library. Tickets £15 (conc. 12) from Barbican Box Office.

Wednesday July 9th, 2.15pm, St Giles Cripplegate

POTU presents a reading of Milton’s great ‘lyrical drama’ Samson Agonistes. 

Tickets £8 (conc. £6) on the door.
 

Current Publications

New Poems on the Underground 2006 (Cassell 2006) £7.99 ('a sheer delight', The Times)
Poems on the Underground Audiobook (Orion 2006) £7.99
Poems on the Underground, 10th Edition, (Cassell 2001) £10.99 hb

Carnival of the Animals, with poems commissioned by Poems on the Underground, illus. Satoshi Kitamura, and CD of Saint-Saëns' music by Apollo Chamber Orchestra (Walker Books 2005) £10.99
('a must-have for every home'—Publishing News)

 

Press Comments

Evening Standard (12 October 2000)
Simon Jenkins 'Poetic Justice for the Tube'

'At first dismissed as "far-fetched if not preposterous... the exposure of an obscure and esoteric passion", the poems have infused the city's subconscious. "Thank you, whoever you are," cried a delighted letters to London Transport. The authority itself was stunned to find itself actually popular at last.
A poem is not a novel, in which the reader buries the head against the world. It is not a book but a word picture. To watch a passenger reading a poem on the underground, and catch the fleeting smile, is to share in a brief conspiracy of understanding.
Such poetry should not be an occasional delight, displayed as now for just two months... It should be compulsory in each of London Underground's 4,000 carriages, like a smoke alarm or a mind-the-step announcement. The absence of a poem should be a signal passed at danger.'

Socialist Review (published September 1996)
'Poetry in Motion'
Interview with Judith Chernaik about the history and future of the Poems on the Underground project.
Click here to read the interview.