IT HAS been poetry in motion this month for the Irish among London’s four million daily Tube commuters - and there's not a Leaving Cert English paper in sight!
Those who’ve been able to open their bleary eyes long enough on the morning trek to work will have spotted a set of six poems inspired by WB Yeats.
Poems on the Underground, a project aiming to bring poetry to the wider public, is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Irish poet throughout the year.
Trains travelling across the city are currently carrying a series of specially designed poetry posters by Tom Davidson.
This first set of poems appeared in tube carriages at the beginning of March, while the latest Poems on the Underground anthology is due to be published by Penguin tomorrow.
The book will also be launched in the capital by Ambassador Dan Mulhall at the Irish Embassy on April 15.
London’s Tube carriages have featured poems for almost 30 years.
Now supported by Transport for London and Arts Council England, the idea originated in 1986 from US writer Judith Chernaik, who aspired to bring poetry to a wider audience.
“We're very pleased to be sharing the delights of Irish poetry past and present with four million daily Tube travellers,” she said. “We hope Londoners will enjoy this very special set of poems, which celebrate the great poet W.B. Yeats, born 150 years ago.”
From the final stanza of Sailing to Byzantium (Yeats's tribute to the timeless power of imagination) to and his popular love poem He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, there are six Yeats-related poems currently on London Underground trains.
Also featured is a translation of Antoine Ó Raifteirí's Irish verses by Lady Gregory - Yeats's friend and supporter - as well as a Louis MacNeice epigraph to Holes in the Sky.
Poems by contemporary Irish poets Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan also feature.
And the poetry lesson is set to continue with plans to launch a free leaflet featuring works by Yeats as well as Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, in a translation from Irish by Paul Muldoon.
These will be distributed free at Tube stations around the capital later this year.
Show off your culture skills with these six Yeats quotes...
W.B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
W.B. Yeats, He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Lady Augusta Gregory, Mise Raifteiri an File / I am Raftery the Poet - from the Irish of Antoine Ó Raifteirí, first published in Poets and Dreamers (Dublin 1903)
Louis MacNeice, What is truth? - from Collected Poems (Faber 1979)
Eavan Boland, Legends - from Collected Poems (Carcanet 1995)
Paula Meehan, Not Weeding - from Painting Rain (Carcanet 2009)
Have you spotted Yeats on the Tube? Tweet @theirishpost #YeatsQuote
