London 2012 Festival poems
Click on the poem titles above to view the poems
Three poems by Shakespeare, our Olympic bard, and three poems by resident Londoners are on display for eight weeks from late May 2012. All six poems are part of the London 2012 Festival, and have been chosen with the summer’s festivities in mind.
Shakespeare is represented by the popular Sonnet 18 (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’); a merry song from As You Like It (‘Under the greenwood tree’); and Puck’s immortal lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘I go, I go, look how I go, Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow’.
Three poems by Londoners celebrate, in turn, a famous sports hero, ‘Viv’ (for cricketer Vivian Richards) by Faustin Charles; typical London summer weather, ‘The Thunderbolt’s Training Manual’ by Danielle Hope; and the charms of east London, the Olympics site: ‘In the Heart of Hackney’ by Sebastian Barker.
The new set of poems coincides with a World Poems on the Underground booklet, 100,000 copies of poems by 50 world poets and translators, now available free to the public at tube stations, libraries and other venues throughout London in the summer of 2012.
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