Playing with Poetry, Riding the Lines
This National Poetry Day, I’m thinking about play, about poetry, and about the small moments that make a city human.
Today is National Poetry Day, and this year’s theme is play.
I’ve always thought that poetry is one of the best forms of play we’ve got. It’s a chance to toss words in the air and see where they land. To turn the world into a stage. To take the odd, the everyday, the fleeting, and find the rhythm that makes it sing.
That’s the spirit that shaped Tubelines. For five years I carried notebooks on the Underground, writing down half-conversations, stray glances, and the tiny theatres unfolding between strangers. The poems that came out of those journeys aren’t heavy manifestos or grand declarations. They’re playful, intimate, and sometimes absurd. They’re the moments that make a city human.
One of my favourites, The Karma Kid, is about a boy in a “GOOD KARMA” t-shirt who actually was unironically spreading good karma. Just a small act of almost unintentional kindness that somehow felt extraordinary. To me, that’s poetry. Finding the play in the serious, the joy in the ordinary, the magic in the mundane.
So it feels right that Tubelines is stepping into the world this week. The book launches this Saturday, 4th October, at the Poetry Café in London with readings, a Q&A, and plenty of time to raise a glass. Then I’ll be in Glasgow on the 8th to celebrate with another event. Both events are completely free to attend, and at accessible venues with food, drink, and merriment for all.
And if you can’t be there in person, pre-orders are open now. Those early copies don’t just help me, they help queer authors and small publishers like Reconnecting Rainbows Press get seen.
So, wherever you are, I hope you find a little space to play today. Read a poem, scribble a line, notice something ordinary and make it strange. Poetry is for everyone, and today’s as good a day as any to remind ourselves of that.
Onwards!
A book full of poems that are not just a love letter to the London Underground, but a poetic map of movement, memory, and meaning across half a decade of living in the capital.