Mind the Gap

Platform for Art launches its first ever book Kings Cross is Rising: a collaboration between writer John Simmons and London Underground staff.

The daily commute is often a pressure cooker of fitting onto a tube bursting with sweat and annoyance, the sinking misery of cancelled trains and the stress of forgetting your Oyster card in a different back pocket.

So, seeing an art exhibition at Gloucester Road or reading one of the many Poems on the Underground lifts the spirits. And with a such a captive (sometimes literally if you're stuck on a platform or train) audience it makes sense to add a bit of culture to the experience.

Platform for Art have recently come up with some innovative projects: Thin Cities, celebrating 100 years of the Piccadilly Line has exhibitions at Cockfosters, Green Park, Piccadilly and Leicester Square and even a soundscape at Knightsbridge.

The pieces are all by working artists, but the new book Kings Cross is Rising is a departure in that it features work by London Underground staff themselves.

The writer John Simmons was the first ever writer-in-residence at Kings Cross station and through creative writing workshops he and the staff have created a book of poems, prose , the beginnings of novels and observations on their work, their lives and, most strikingly, the people that become part of their subterranean world. It is a great read.

Abdul Habib's Book Opening is well observed: "I love you, don't go. I love you, hear me out," he shouted at the young woman running away from him.

And Simon Miles' Some People We Know , "He is a big girl's blouse, He is a bonsai tree, always says he's never getting bigger," a funny and fascinating insight. But, actually, the real power of this book is that all the people and situations - the character with the trolley filled with fruit and the passengers trying to board the train with a horse - are all real and without affectation. They are other tube users whom we probably try to avoid eye contact with. They are you and I.

There's a whole section devoted to 7/7, rightly so. Again, it's poignancy lies in it's honesty: no media spin, no dramatics, just the truth as these writers saw it. Kings Cross is Rising minds the gap between how we see the tube staff and how they see us. Because despite all its problems there's real affection for this transport system.

And if you do manage to enjoy one of life's small, smug pleasures and get a seat on the train from King's Cross this little book will make your journey far more pleasurable - signal failure notwithstanding, of course.

Kings Cross is Rising is free but limited edition and subject to availability.

To request a copy visit: www.tfl.gov.uk

• add to del.icio.us
• digg this article!