Orpheus falls flat on the Underground
Page 18
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
A PLAN by the Scottish Arts Council to impart culture to Glasgow's new Underground railway by exhibiting poems on vacant poster sites had an immediate setback. Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive rejected the first set of verses by Edwin Morgan as unsuitable.
Surely, I asked myself incredulously, they could be nothing like the published works of unofficial scribes on posters and elsewhere? Of course not. The poet's offence was merely to have invented a small animal kingdom that inhabited the system; to wit, a piranha, a budgie, a cat and a giraffe. Thei habits, the PTE thought, were inappropriate to their proposed habitat.
The PTE would prefer something on a more general theme unrelated to the Underground. Do they know what they are risking? Have the never heard of the improbable activities of young ladies in a variety of places far removed from railways and recorded in verse? What a mercy there is nc PTE in Gloucester.