Poems on the Underground, Art, and Maps

If you are passing through one of the larger stations in Central London look for the brochures in the racks on Poems on the Underground and Art on the Underground.

I had expected a leaflet about trains, but the leaflet I picked up was 'celebrating Irish poetry'. The poems included were by Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Something to read on the train, also to keep.

Poetry
tel.gov.uk/poems

Art
art.tfl.gov.uk
Facebook: /artontheunderground

The art includes tiles, mazes, quotations and drawings of the staff. I'd love to do caricatures of famous people associated with every station.

The larger stations such as Euston have a leaflet showing the station and nearby roads and buildings, handing for finding your way.

A map covering a large part of central London is inside the leaflet which has a bicycle on the cover and the title Explore London with Santander Cycles. The map does not show every road, just the main roads and a few prominent landmarks. But it did alert me to the Handel House Museum, showing the location near Oxford Street.

Every time I look at Poems on the Underground, or see one of the poems overhead as I'm sitting on the train, I get the urge to write a poem about train travel.

The Underground
by Angela Lansbury

The escalator goes down and down
The Circle Line goes around and around
Teenagers lives carried in big backpacks
Mums in jeans clutching babies on their laps

The city's veins in coloured maps
Recordings warn you, "Mind the gap!"
Mobiles put a smile on every face
The busker strokes a double bass

Commuters race past far too quick
To get their money's worth of music
You could spend your life in the underground
Where shops and cafés form a hidden town

Watch where lines cross and where they meet
Too soon upstairs in the neon street
Where gusty wind, or snow or rain
Make you long for the warm train home again.
Copyright Angela Lansbury 2016.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.