‘Berso sa Metro’ – Poetry Trains in the Philippines

manilametro Poetry has been arriving via the metro in the highly polluted Manila megalopolis of the Philippine capital. Passengers on the Manila railway have been reading the verses of Pablo Neruda, Luis Cernuda, Lope de Vega and San Juan de la Cruz whilst travelling, thanks to a campaign to promote reading.

The campaign was started by the Cervantes Institute and the Spanish Embassy.

‘How swift the street seen all at once, the car mirrors multiplied by the sun, how filthy the air: and this was the world?’ is a translated verse by the Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas, one of many to be pasted on the side of the trains. The campaign covers the 17 kilometres and 13 stations between Pasay and Quezon.

‘If we can reach one percent of the half million commuters that ride this line every day, we’ll be happy,’ said Jose Rodriguez, director of the Cervantes in Manila. According to official date, the most popular books in the Philippines are the Bible and romance novels. Twenty-two percent of adults say they read at least once a week.

The metro has donated this space, for which it normally charges 300,000 pesos ($6155) a day, to display poems in English and Spanish written by 15 Spanish, Latin American and Filipino poets, from independence leader Jose Rizal to Jaime Gil de Biedma and Luis Garcia Montero.

‘Berso sa Metro’, the name of the campaign in the Tagalog language of the Philippines, has met with wild acclaim from the nation’s bloggers. ‘Tu Risa’ (Your Laughter) by Pablo Neruda and ‘Tu Justificas Mi Existencia’ (You Justify My Existence) by Luis Cernuda being the most popular.

‘I tried to reflect on what the poets inspired in me and at the same time create attractive designs to get the attention of passengers who are always in a hurry,’ said Filipino Nikkorlai Tapan, the campaign’s art director.

New York and Madrid were some of the first cities to experiment with the poetry trains and its expected more cities will follow suit.