Poems on the Underground

Last year the British Council worked with Poems on the London Underground to celebrate Indian Poetry on the London tube network. Six Indian poets had their work was displayed for 4 weeks which is when l photoed the two l am now blipping.

The British Council has supported Poems on the Underground since the programme began in 1986.

The main blip is called "This Morning" by Mona Arshi. The blurb says "the youngest poet featured, Arshi is a London child's perception of her Indian mother's very different world. Born in 1970 to Punjabi Sikh parents in West London and grew up in Hounslow. She worked for decades as a lawyer for a human rights charity, Liberty UK. Her book, Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection.

The second blip is a poem called "Approaching Fifty" by Avind Krishna Mehrotra, could be about the stages of a man's life at any time, in any country. Mehrotra was born in 1947 in Lahore, the year of India's independence, when Lahore became part of the new country of Pakistan. He is a major figure in Indian poetry with three collections and an influential anthology of Indian poetry published by Oxford University Press.