Poetry on the Platforms
by Anna Woodford
Poetry on the Platforms started in 2021 with an extraordinary metro journey in my home city of Newcastle upon Tyne. I was on public transport for the first time in over a year. Out of the window were ‘ghost posters’ advertising theatre productions that had never taken place. Inside the carriage were stickers warning of the need to maintain social distance. I thought how brilliant it would be if some of the poems I had seen on social media talking about the pandemic could fill some of those advertising hoardings. How their words might comfort and distract people as they went about trying to embrace the ‘new normal’.
The idea did not come completely out the blue. I’d worked with First York and Go North East bus companies a couple of years earlier, putting poems on the inside and outside of buses in Newcastle and York. Both travel companies were very supportive, already aware of the potential impact of poetry through projects such as Poems on the Underground. I had seen public art on Newcastle’s Metro system so thought they too might be amenable to a poetry project. In addition, I knew getting people back to using public transport was a priority for travel companies and felt that poems could contribute to people feeling more comfortable as they went about their daily journeys. When I got home, I emailed Nexus (the company which runs Newcastle’s Metro) to suggest the possibility of a poetry installation. I emphasised that the poems would be by published writers and based in the North for a local angle. I also said that they would be positive in tone and the aim would be to uplift and provide delight to commuters’ journeys. The following day I heard back with a ‘yes’.
When I emailed Nexus I was pushing at an open door. The then head of communications was an English literature graduate who loved poetry. He agreed to support the project by finding a suitable installation space and waiving advertising costs. He also offered to print the posters. So far, so great. However, I needed another partner to support the poets and also some rationale behind the people that were selected for the installation. I was working as a Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Fellow and approached the organisation, which has a network of writers in universities across the UK, to see if they might be interested. The answer was another resounding yes.
Nexus suggested Longbenton station, a busy suburban station serving over a million passengers annually, as an exhibition space. There are four outsized billboards at Longbenton which are unusable as advertising space because of their dimensions, but perfect for poetry. The station also has a couple of minutes longer ‘wait time’ than the central Newcastle stations so potential for commuters to actually read the poems. It also happens to be a station just ten minutes from my home and it was thrilling to wander up there and see the first poems going on display in the summer of 2021. Those poems all discussed the pandemic but, since then, poems have not been themed and the only requirement is they need to be shortish and appropriate for a general audience in a public space. As well as showcasing RLF Fellows, subsequent installations have included the work of poets who work for the RLF in other capacities including on their WritersMosaic developmental resource focused on UK writers of the global majority, as well as poets who have received a grant from the organisation. Commuters have been treated to diverse and exciting poetry from Rommi Smith, Phoebe Power, John Siddique, and gobscure, among others.
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A new crop of poems have just gone on display in Longbenton. Myself, Jo Clement, Christy Ducker, Harry Man and Degna Stone have poems exhibited. For the first time, more by coincidence than design, the poems all discuss the Metro itself. Jo Clement has written an anthemic ‘Metty’ blessing [bless those who stand up for those who need it / drivers & carers, the lit-up word due], Christy Ducker movingly conjures the parallel lives of two women framed by the train’s doors [the one who’ll stroll on board and dangle / her bags, coat and life by a sliding door], Harry Man, in a poem after George Seferis, tenderly describes picking someone up from work [your shadow bent across the wall / like a tree releasing a secret from its time], Degna Stone beautifully commemorates plant species on the station verges [Low growing weeds, rust-red art deco sunbursts / dot the grass on the other side of the station border / pilosella aurantiaca orange hawkweed fox-and-cubs] and I have had fun playing around with Metro bylaws [Except with prior permission from the Operator, / no poem on the Metro shall sing].
In a few short years, Longbenton has become Newcastle’s ‘poetry station’. Nexus, in collaboration with The Poetry School, runs a regular poetry competition with the prize-winning poems going on display at the station. There has even been talk about a poetry app for commuters. Who knows what’s coming, but so far it has been a brilliant journey.
Anna Woodford has won the Ledbury Competition, the Wigtown Prize, an Authors Foundation Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a PBS recommendation and two Northern Writers’ awards. Her poetry has been featured on buses in Newcastle and York and in North East metro stations and fire stations. She has completed writing residencies at Hawthornden Castle and the Blue Mountain Center (New York). She is a freelance teacher and writer and lives in Newcastle with her husband and son. Her latest collection is Everything is Present.
