From Transition no. 11, April 2000

Streets of Meaning: Poetry in Motion

By Chris Wood

This article is dedicated to the memory of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, inspired architect and artist: born 15th December 1928, died 19th February 2000.

Go straight on, and right at Harrods...or was it Bloomingdale's? You're on Someplace High Road, on the way to somewhere else, car-dodging over side-roads, or stuck on a snail's pace bus. You could be in Manhattan, Hong Kong or Tel Aviv.

Now waiting to cross the road at a busy thoroughfare, you can take the time to look around you, if you dare to risk standing still when you could hurry on once more. For there above the breathless rush is some small reprieve.

Above the gaudy and tatty display, plate glass and fumes, another city regards its heedless denizens. Robert Peel, I see, and there, Pan, laughing as I pass, beneath his forest of bricks, tiles and grimed copper leaf.

Dragons surmount the supermarket; a gryphon stands guard over air-conditioned offices and shops selling hard. A mystic tree adorns a pub with filigree surround and subtle runic talismans ask what we believe.

Imagine you have worked in the same office for forty years, left at the same time every day, and walked the same route to the same Underground station. Imagine one day, out of the blue, you leave work as usual, but the street is different: the street is angry.

This is the experience G.K. Chesterton gave a City worker back in 1908, in his short story, The Angry Street. At first, the street seems as though it has become steep, then, on turning a corner, it rises up like the side of a mountain. Undaunted, Chesterton's flabbergasted commuter climbs onwards and, on an exhausted whim, pulls open a manhole cover and looks down... to see stars. He is then confronted by a strange figure, whether angelic or demonic he cannot be sure, who tells him that the street does not, today, go to "Oldgate Station", but rather "to heaven for justice". It seems our hero has given too little regard to the road he has traversed daily for forty years. Scoffing and protesting that "[d]ay after day, year after year, it has always gone to Oldgate Station", he is reminded in no uncertain terms that, from the perspective of the street, "[d]ay after day, year after year" he himself has gone to Oldgate Station.

The experience leaves Chesterton's City worker a changed man, nervously apologising to chairs and tables, but what must the street think to his counterpart of today? In real life, streets don't appeal to Heaven for justice, for recognition of the slights, injuries and indignities visited upon them by heedless humans, but perhaps they might...

It is not clear which street Chesterton had in mind for the angry "Bumpton Street", but the office of forty years' employment is situated in Leadenhall Street, we are told. Walking that thoroughfare today, it is clear that few of its workers, or those who travel along it, give much regard to the street itself. It is worth considering how much of the street was there in Chesterton's day. Certainly not the shiny metal and bright, restless lifts of the back of the Lloyds building, nor the plaza frontage to Crédit Agricole. Leadenhall Market was certainly there, and the small, former church of St. Mary Axe. But the main continuity is the street itself, following the same route, despite changes of architecture, surface materials, traffic technology and dress, just as we are the same people for all that every cell of our bodies is replaced every seven years.

Life and death on mean streets

Not long before Chesterton, in the scheme of things, travellers at the City's gates would have sought divine protection for their journeys, or given thanks for their successful completion, at one of four churches dedicated to St. Botolph. This is a far cry from today, where anything worse than 'leaves on the line' or overcrowding is a rare event - or is it? Certainly walkers and cyclists, in particular, are still killed and injured at an alarming rate on London's roads, and the fear of personal attack - never mind its actuality - makes many people avoid certain places or times, or enter them with trepidation. But the City's hectic lifestyle allows small space for spiritual succour (if it does have some fine churches, often built-around and hidden away), just as its dim alleyways and subways, and streets made impersonal by traffic, allow small space for physical security.

Appleyard's famous research in the U.S.A. demonstrates the impact traffic levels have on social interaction. People living on faster, more heavily trafficked streets have fewer friends and acquaintances than those on slower, more lightly trafficked streets. The greater the imposition of traffic, the more we shut ourselves off from the street and our neighbours. Similarly, our perception of the streetscape is altered by traffic. TEST's 'space sharing' studies of buses in pedestrian areas found angle of crossing a reliable indicator of the perception of safety. In the centre of the Swedish city of Göteborg (Gothenburg), traffic restrictions even generated over-compensation, initially: people forgot that some vehicles could still come along. The situation there settled down, so that people are able safely to appreciate their surroundings in a way which was difficult before the restrictions.

And in the City of London, there is much to appreciate (especially perhaps at first-floor level and above). The City is ancient, even if almost totally rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, and pretty much since. The atmosphere of its vast history is tangible. People have lived and worked here for at least two thousand years, and probably longer. There is evidence of ancient ceremonial and sacred uses of such places as Ludgate Hill (where St. Paul's Cathedral now stands) and Tower Hill long before the Romans called the settlement Londinium. The line of Cannon Street, for instance, may have been laid down ceremonially in prehistory. Other streets are clearly of Saxon origin, such as Cheapside. And its streets are amazingly important - they occupy almost as much space as do offices, in this tiny, office-intensive municipality.

Yet, ironically, the City has in the recent past sought to distance itself from its street heritage. Whilst the penetration of the City by the railway entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century was unthinkable, there was an enthusiastic take-up of post-war ideas for remodelling the urban fabric. The separation of people and vehicles in the form of subways and high-level walkways has its apogee in the drab, utilitarian concrete of the Barbican. But attitudes have changed since Buchanan's Traffic in Towns laid before planners the stark choice of controlling the car or rebuilding the city. Then, they chose to rebuild; now, at last, control of the car is the established policy - as well it should be with the country's by far highest proportion of visitors arriving by public transport.

In 1983, Gavin Smith wrote two articles in Town & Country Planning, one showing the benefits of traffic restraint and bus priority in Central London, the other fantasising about travel in 2003. Smith was one of the founders of CILT, which subsequently commissioned the late Dr. John Roberts' consultancy TEST to produce research reports showing the way out of Central London's "appalling street environment". The first of these (The Accessible City) considered the City, with its "disproportionate allocation of movement space to people in vehicles rather than on their feet". The report set out a programme to change that - one that had much in common with the official plan, which could have been implemented, had the Greater London Council not been abolished in 1986.

In the seventeen years since Smith's articles, change has been slow in coming, due in no small part to the demise of the G.L.C., although the City's recent traffic restrictions have brought some welcome improvements. Smith's vision of 2003 seems as unlike the reality of 2000 as it did that of 1983. Perhaps the Mayor will be able and willing to do better?

Street Life

The physical buildings and carriageways are only part of the street, of course. Its purpose is the activity it contains. People live, sleep, eat, drink, love, shop, work and die there, whether or not contained within its buildings. The open-air part of the street is today generally regarded as merely an arena for movement, and this primarily by motor vehicle. But it was not always so, and indeed other activities are coming back, particularly following pedestrianisation or traffic calming.

Great processional ways are just that, not traffic arteries. Wider parts of many streets came about because of activity other than transport: markets, moot places, space for sports and practising weapon skills (such as archery butts), showgrounds, etc. Gatherings of the citizenry give life to the street and the rituals people perform are part of its being. May-day processions (which long pre-date the Labour movement), mumming, Morris and other folk dances, street parties, festivals secular and religious, all go to make the street scene, and so the street (see Hutton, 1997; Pennick, 1998; Porter, 1996). Added to these are political gatherings and processions, whether they be mayoral cavalcades, great marches on Trafalgar Square, 'Stop the City' protests, political parties' loud hailer cars on election days, charity flag days, or, less positively, riots and displays of popular resentment at moral transgression (such as the old tradition of 'rough music').

And we still have some fairs, festivals, processions and other street life, even if Big Issue sellers and pension-plan pushers are a far cry from the street fairs of old. Street parties still happen - although it is interesting to note that it is not the main motor traffic thoroughfares that are closed off to accommodate them, but usually those reserved for cyclists or buses...

We still have street markets, but all too often they are either tired and shabby affairs with perceived dubious quality or have been sanitised and squashed into an expensive building (or both), the middle ground is unfortunately rare. Where fairs still survive, they are usually dim shadows of their former selves, frequently mere collections of mechanised rides and opportunities to buy or win sugar fixes and cheap plastic toys: packaged entertainment rather than spirited enjoyment. Less violent than they sometimes were too, of course - unfortunately the traditional freedom from social norms enjoyed by fairgoers sometimes leads to unpleasantness and criminality, and the powers that be are persuaded to step in and regulate spontaneity. A current example is the recently introduced Parliamentary Bill to bring the Royal Parks under the general park trading laws.

This is also the downside to mass public transport. Whilst clearly essential and desirable, it does mean a degree of regimentation. When we feel our personalities squashed by sheer numbers of other people, we retreat within ourselves and become insular motes in the dust of the city.

A verse to communicate

Our aversion to eye contact - let alone more overt communication - on the Underground is legendary (not that we are alone in this, in Stockholm, for instance, there is an expression, "Underground eyes", for the non-seeing gaze of the metro-commuter, unwilling to get involved in anything around them). But with our attention focused on the interior of the train by the darkness of the tunnels, we cast around for something to entertain our eyes, unless we sleep, meditate or have had the forethought to bring reading material. Advertisers have long realised the potential of this situation and have capitalised on it. So we happily read posters promoting holidays, portable air-conditioning and car insurance (although one might question the presence of the latter on public transport). In January 1986, more cultured reading matter began to appear: the 'Poems on the Underground' initiative was born.

The idea came from a group of friends, including Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert, who are running the initiative still. They have been credited with inspiring a renewed appreciation of poetry. Over the years, they have received support from the Arts Council, London Arts Board, the British Council, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Faber and Faber, Oxford University Press, W.H. Smith, The Times Literary Supplement, various foundations, and of course London Underground (LUL).

In 1989, LUL agreed to provide all the display spaces free and pay production costs, so that there could be at least one poem per carriage. There have inevitably been changes in the ensuing ten years. The London Transport Museum now manages the scheme on behalf of L.U.L. and the transfer of Underground advertising to a private agency, T.D.I., has restricted the number of poems being displayed, although 1999 saw a large increase thanks to extra funding. Currently, 2000 poem posters are displayed for a month three times a year, and the Museum is hoping to increase this.

To say Poems on the Underground has been popular would be an understatement. Some advertisers have even tried to mimic the style and layout of the poem posters, to attract the eye, with varying degrees of success. By 1991, sufficient poems had been displayed to bring out an anthology, 100 Poems on the Underground. This has gone through successive editions and, as the L.T. Museum's David Ellis says, it has "done incredibly well". Cassell brought out the ninth edition of Poems on the Underground in November 1999, containing nearly 250 poems. They range from the modern day to 600 B.C.E.*, from St. Paul to Spike Milligan, from Yeats to McGough. There is a fair smattering of translations from French, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Chinese ... not to mention Erse and Old English.

And English poems have been translated for use elsewhere too. Indeed, Poems on the Underground began to be emulated in other cities almost as soon as it started. Dublin's D.A.R.T. rail system was the first, launching its scheme a year after London, then came Stuttgart. Paris has an extensive programme. According to Judith Chernaik the idea has been taken up in virtually every capital city in Europe and many others, and Wien (Vienna), Oslo, Helsinki, Moscow and St. Petersburg have entered into poem swaps. Outside Europe, schemes have appeared in Shanghai, Toronto, Santiago, Melbourne - and she was herself involved in New York City Transit Authority's 'Poetry in Motion', being from that city.

Whilst London's poems have been almost exclusively an Underground phenomenon (there have been a few on buses), all kinds of public transport have been involved globally. So, for instance, in Oslo, nearly 100 poems have appeared since 1995 in metro trains, trams and buses, and in corridors of one of its few underground metro stations, Stortinget. Oslo has recently produced its first anthology of 'Dikt underveis' ('Poetry on the Way'), published by the Norwegian Verse Club, which started the initiative with enthusiastic co-operation from the Norwegian Board of Culture, the Norwegian Association of Authors and Oslo Transport (Oslo Sporveier).

As in London, the poems have been taken from diverse sources, from the Sami people of the North to translations of stanzas from Urdu, from today back to (again) 600 B.C.E. However, unlike London, Oslo has a preponderance of living poets' work on display. The themes are also wide-ranging, from love to disaster, from humour to the words of Odin (in the rune-poem Hávamál).

Rebirth of meaning

In London, the historical diversity of the Poems on the Underground has been deliberate. Like the artefacts at street-level, it is also a reminder of the length of time people have been living in this city and shaping it.

Even cities with the most 'organic' form have been planned, but it is not just the Abercrombies, Hausmanns and Corbusiers with their masterplans who form the street and the city, nor just the architects, great like Hundertwasser or unremarked, nor even the developers with their money, but also the inhabitants. Every day, ordinary people change the street with their activities, whether or not they are aware of it. If the street is conducive to that dynamism, then the result is life-enhancing, the very soul of the place can reassert itself; if it is not, if it tries to force humanity into a concrete and tarmac machine, then the result is degradation, devoid of life beyond existence, devoid of spirit.

And the poems are little bits of life, like the Butterfly Bushes clinging to blackened eaves. The authors of most of them may well have had different preoccupations to their tube-borne readers, just as did the sculptor of the figure of Pan on the rooftop, or of foliate heads in mediæval cathedrals, or the architect of spires now arising from a sea of concrete, brick and glass. But they are part of a living city, with ever-renewing expression; whatever their original meaning and purpose, they speak to us now of other ways, of parts of ourselves we have lost.

But we may find we have not lost them. Here, in this city, here is your soul...

Now look down again and with eyes renewed survey the scene, see beyond the sense-commanding, jealous traffic stream, and behold the city out of time, as it's always been.

* B.C.E. = Before Common Era.

Bibliography