The idea for Poems on the Underground was thought up by a New Yorker 40 years ago this month. This may surprise you, given that the posters are synonymous with London. But then again, the creative possibilities of a transport system tend to be lost on its native commuters. Judith Chernaik, a lecturer in English literature, had recently relocated to the capital when she fell in love with the Tube: ‘Compared to New York it’s bliss – clean, safe and fast, too… if things are working of course.’

Ozymandias was soon riding the lines from Aldwych with Robert Burns

In As You Like It, Orlando goes around the Forest of Arden dangling sonnets for Rosalind from trees. Those sonnets are mostly dire, but it occurred to Chernaik, while studying the text at her neighbours’ play-reading group, that good poems might be dangled before Londoners to break up the advertisements. The scheme would later be rolled out across other major cities of the world. 

‘Both Shelley and Keats are really behind the whole idea,’ Chernaik elaborated in a vibrant documentary for Radio 4’s Artworks, unwilling to give Shakespeare full credit. Shelley was a fellow advocate of the idea........

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