Poems on the Underground at 40: the autumn set and Saturday's concert

Forty years ago three friends talked London Underground into putting a few poems up inside its carriages. Today, 19 October 2026, the autumn set went live on the trains, and on Saturday the programme marks its fortieth birthday with a concert on the South Bank. Here is what it is, where to read the poems free, and how to get in on Saturday.

What is Poems on the Underground?

It is poetry on the poster slots inside Tube carriages, where advertising would otherwise be. It began in January 1986 as an experiment by three friends: the writer Judith Chernaik and the poets Cicely Herbert and Gerard Benson. They persuaded London Underground to post a few poems on its trains, and the Underground has backed the programme ever since. By the programme's own reckoning the posters reach three million travellers a day.

New sets appear three times a year, with free themed leaflets on station platforms in between. The posters are designed by Tom Davidson. The poems are chosen by three editors: Judith Chernaik, Imtiaz Dharker and George Szirtes.

The money comes from Arts Council England — the programme holds a National Portfolio Organisation grant for 2023-2026 — with major support from Transport for London and the British Council. The Council also sends the posters to its offices abroad.

What is in the carriages right now?

The autumn set went up on Underground and Overground trains on 19 October and runs for four weeks. The launch was the same day, 11.30am to noon outside Covent Garden station, with readings by Valerie Bloom, Bernard O'Donoghue and Maura Dooley.

The programme does not publish the autumn line-up in advance — you find out in the carriage. For scale: among the very first poems, in January 1986, was Seamus Heaney's "The Railway Children", and in 1987 came Fleur Adcock's "Immigrant", a poem about having just arrived in someone else's country.

What it sounds like

Among the programme’s poems is an extract from Anna Akhmatova’s "Requiem" in Richard McKane’s English translation, read by the Irish poet Paula Meehan. The recording was made and published by the programme itself, and plays here straight from its own server.

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Where to go on Saturday, and what it costs

The fortieth anniversary evening is on Saturday 24 October at 5pm in the Purcell Room on the South Bank: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. It runs about an hour and a quarter. Tickets start at £17, concessions are available, and the age guidance is 15 and over. Patience Agbabi, Judith Chernaik, Imtiaz Dharker and George Szirtes read; the Apollo String Quartet and the saxophonist Juliet Lewis play. The evening is part of the London Literature Festival.

The nearest Tube stations are Waterloo and Embankment, and Waterloo is the nearest railway station too. One practical detail: Southbank Centre venues do not take cash, so bring a card.

Where to read the poems for nothing

The programme's website holds more than seven hundred poems, with more added every month. For the anniversary there is a leaflet, "40 Poems for 40 Years": forty texts, the ones travellers liked best plus the editors' own favourites. Every poem in it has been recorded by poets, among them Ian Duhig, Imtiaz Dharker and Michael Rosen. The printed leaflet is handed out at selected Underground stations and is also available from the Poetry Society, the National Poetry Library and the London Transport Museum.

The National Poetry Library is on Level 5 of the Royal Festival Hall, at the same address, Belvedere Road SE1 8XX. It opens Tuesday noon to 6pm and Wednesday to Sunday noon to 8pm, and closes on Mondays. Membership is free to anyone in the UK. The library describes its collection as the largest public collection of modern poetry in the world.

The "40 Poems for 40 Years" leaflet is online as a PDF — the forty poems over a few pages, ready to print or open on a phone. There is audio to go with it: all forty poems in one file, read by twenty-two poets including Ian Duhig, Imtiaz Dharker, Michael Rosen, Valerie Bloom, Patience Agbabi and Paula Meehan.

The books and the archive

After the first five years on the trains came the book "100 Poems on the Underground", which quickly became a best-seller; it has been revised for the anniversary and is sold in bookshops or directly by the publisher, The Poetry Business. A later selection, "Poems on the Underground: A New Edition", is now a Penguin Classic.

The archive — hundreds of posters, memorabilia and letters from poets including Seamus Heaney and Louise Gluck — has been given to Cambridge University Library, catalogued, and is open to anyone who wants to consult it. The posters themselves are usually available from the Poetry Society and the London Transport Museum.