Friday 21 Feb 2025

TfL to host live poetry readings from award-winning poets at Covent Garden station, as part of popular Poems on the Underground series

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Readings by featured poets will take place on Monday 24 February at 11:30 at Covent Garden station to mark a new set of poetry to be published by Poems on the Underground
Winner of Foyle Young Poet award, Lewis Corry, will recite his poem 2013, Daedalus never moved away for work, along with writer and poet Niall Campbell who will recite his poem February Morning at the station along with TfL staff recitals
Four other new poems will feature on the Tube, London Overground and Elizabeth line by poets including Bei Dao, George Herbert, Li-Young Lee and Sujata Bhatt

Transport for London (TfL) brings live poetry readings to Covent Garden station on Monday 24 February, to mark six new poems to be featured on London Underground, London Overground and Elizabeth line trains.

Featured poets, Niall Campbell, Imtiaz Dharker and Foyle Young Poet Lewis Corry, will read their poems, as well as TfL staff who are budding poets. Scottish writer and poet, Niall Campbell will record and perform his poem February Morning, plus some other poems from fellow Scottish poets, and Lewis Corry, will record and perform his poem 2013, Daedalus never moved away for work, at the station. In addition, Imtiaz Dharker, poet, artist and video film-maker and part of Poems on the Underground, will participate in the poetry reading.

Campbell’s and Corry’s poems are two of six poems that have been selected for this spring’s collection of Poems on the Underground.

Mark Evers, TfL's Chief Customer Officer, said: “Poems on the Underground has been inspiring and entertaining customers travelling for almost 40 years since the first posters appeared on the London Underground in 1986, and we hope our customers enjoy the latest set of poems launching on our network. It is a pleasure for us to launch these with a poetry reading at Covent Garden station alongside our own staff, and we are sure these will be a hit with customers attending.”

Judith Chernaik, Founder of Poems on the Underground, said: “These poems are strongly international, with recent work by the dissident Chinese poet Bei Dao, the Indian poet Sujata Bhatt and the Chinese-American poet Li-Young Lee. The poems share common themes as they celebrate life and love, freedom and hope, as spring returns.”

Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, said: “Poems on the Underground are much loved by Londoners and visitors alike, bringing inspiration to our daily travels for four decades.

"Covent Garden is the perfect backdrop to bring them to life through these live readings. Six new poems will be performed by the commissioned poets, as well as budding poets who work on our transport network – showing that poetry is for everyone and helping us build a better London for all.”

Contact Information

TfL Press Office
Transport for London
0343 222 4141
pressoffice@tfl.gov.uk

Notes to editors

About Poems on the Underground

Poems on the Underground started life in January 1986 as an experiment by three friends, writer Judith Chernaik and poets Cicely Herbert and Gerard Benson. They persuaded London Underground to post a few poems on its trains, to the delight of bemused commuters. London Underground has supported the programme ever since, enabling us to offer poetry old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, to millions of daily travellers on London's Underground system. The three co-directors of Poems on the Underground are Judith Chernaik and poets Imtiaz Dharker and George Szirtzes.

About the Poets

Niall Campbell is a poet from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. His first poetry collection, Moontide, was published by Bloodaxe Books and won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and Saltire First Book of the Year. Noctuary, his second collection, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2019.  His latest collection, The Island in the Sound, was published in September of this year. Alongside writing poetry, Niall has worked as a librettist for both the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He is also the editor of the acclaimed poetry journal, Poetry London. He lives in Fife.

Lewis Corry is a young poet from the Isle of Wight. A two-time performer at the Ventnor Fringe festival and Foyle Young Poet, he writes about physics, cowboys, and all the space in between. Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and video film-maker. She is part of Poems on the Underground, and is one of the three poets and authors who select the works that appear on trains each cycle.

She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. She received the Cholmondeley Award and an Honorary Doctorate from SOAS, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she became the Chancellor of Newcastle University. Her collections include Purdah (Oxford University Press), Postcards from god, I speak for the devil and The terrorist at my table (all published by Penguin India and Bloodaxe Books UK), Leaving Fingerprints, Over the Moon, Luck is the Hook and her latest, Shadow Reader (May 2024, Bloodaxe Books UK).

TfL's Poems on the Underground project is supported by Arts Council England and The British Council.

All the poems featured on Poems on the Underground can be found on the Underground Website.

The Poems

February Morning, Niall Campbell

The winter light was still to hit the window,

and all my other selves were still asleep,

when, standing with this child in all our bareness,

I found that I was a ruined bridge, or one

that stood so long half-built and incomplete;

at other times I’d been a swinging gate,

a freed skiff – then his head dropped in the groove

of my neck, true as a keystone, and I fixed:

all stone and good use, two shores with one crossing.

The morning broke, I kissed his head, and stood.

2013, and Daedalus never moved away for work, Lewis Corry

bike-strung boy

sun-licked spark of rubber and steel

you soar

down the driveway

arms spread like wings

it is a wonderful thing to fly

and there is no greater occasion

than being alive