New poems on the underground 2006 - Gerard Benson

Twenty years ago, two British poets, Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert, and an American novelist and academic resident in London, Judith Chernaik, had the stunningly simple idea of displaying poetry in the otherwise unsold ad spaces on the Tube cars to bring the art of language and emotion to the travelling public, no strings attached, no previous experience required. It was immediately successful, and the public took to poetry released - perhaps for the first time - from the inhibitions of its academic straightjacket. The changing display of poems, five or so every four months, all beautifully presented on white landscape posters, was soon a fixed part of the London scene, and with it began a whole new public interest in poetry. The first anthology of Poems on the Underground appeared in 1991; this new collection continues the anthology still further, into 2006, and is an extended version of last year's New Poems on the Underground, which took the collection to the end of 2004.The new poems will include work by David Constantine, Thomas Hardy, Richard Lovelace ('Stone walls do not a prison make') and numerous others not yet selected. As always, some will be old, some new, some will be from American or Commonwealth writers, but all will celebrate the infinite beauty of the English language.