The Book Review: The woman who took poetry underground

February 24, 2026

This is a photograph of Judith Chernaik seated at a London Underground station.

Sam Bush for The New York Times

	By Joumana Khatib

Dear readers,

Thanks to the miracles of email scheduling, I’m far from New York right now, and frankly thrilled to be away from its piles of snow (dirty and new).

I was recently charmed by our piece about the woman who brought poetry to London’s Underground — and by extension, subways across the world. Judith Chernaik, 91, was inspired by Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It,” in which a besotted character hangs odes to his beloved from trees in a forest. Back in 1986, Chernaik and two friends began Poems on the Underground, which puts verse in 2,000 spots on the tube several times a year.

Their efforts have inspired other transit systems, including the Paris Métro and New York’s own gritty miracle, to put similar programs in place. I’m partial to this poem, by Ilya Kaminsky, which always soothes me when I see it on an uptown A train.

See you next week.

In other news

I profiled the reality star Lisa Rinna on the occasion of her new memoir, “You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It.”
Critics, editors and writers gathered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to pay tribute to Book World, The Washington Post’s shuttered books section.

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