Reviews
Those famous poem Tube cards first appeared on the London Underground in 1986, a brave and instantly successful experiment in introducing poetry to an unexpecting audience in a public place. The changing display of poems, five or so every four months, were soon a part of the London scene and did much to spark a new interest in poetry. They appeared in book form in 1991; Poems on the Underground is now in its Tenth Edition. This new collection of 70 or so poems brings the Tenth up to date, with all the poems displayed on the Underground through 2002, 2003 and 2004. Once again, it's an eclectic mix of old and new, familiar and unknown. There are poems of every hue and tone imaginable, from around the world, in English and other languages, all jostling in comfortable juxtaposition for the readers' attention. Poets include John Donne, Louis MacNeice, Lotte Kramer, John Clare, Isaac Rosenberg, Moniza Alvi, Ernest Dawson, Langston Hughes, Yeats, Coleridge, Byron, Ken Smith, Shakespeare, Blake, Ruth Fainlight, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Jennings and that prolific provider of the more ribald of ancient verse, Anonymous. New Poems on the Underground will be designed and produced to the same standard as the hardback anthology, and printed in two colours throughout.