Poetry in Motion: Pre-Orders for Tubelines Start September 1st
“These poems aren’t just about trains. They’re about all the ways we travel through each other’s lives, often without even realising.”
On 1st September 2025, pre-orders will open for Tubelines, the striking new poetry collection from award-winning author, poet, and playwright Kestral Gaian.
Five years in the making, Tubelines is a lyrical love letter to the London Underground and the millions of journeys it holds. Across fifty poems, Gaian takes readers through 272 stations and eleven iconic lines, capturing moments of connection, stillness, humour, and humanity in one of the world’s busiest transport networks.
Written in eight battered notebooks and with three well-worn pens, the collection was shaped between station stops, on crowded platforms, and in the rare hush of late-night trains. Each poem is rooted in the rhythm and atmosphere of the Tube, from the breathless rush-hour crush on the Jubilee to the slow sway of the Piccadilly after midnight.
We worked with Kestral to provide a first glimpse at one of their poems – Riot – a poem written on the way back from London Trans Pride almost exactly two years ago.
“These poems are full of moments I’ve carried with me, like overheard conversations, shared glances, the feel of a wooden handrail, even the never-ending building works at Old Street Station.
I can’t wait for people to read them and recognise something of their own journeys in these lines, whether they’ve been on the Tube a thousand times or not at all.“
This first glimpse offers the rhythm, intimacy, and energy that define Tubelines.
Whether you ride the Tube daily or have never set foot on a train, the poems in Tubelines speak to something universal: quiet moments between life’s destinations. These are poems about the pauses and glances, the chance encounters and private reflections that can happen anywhere people share space. The London Underground simply makes them impossible to ignore.