On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © Thirty-one people died and dozens were injured when a commuter service run by Thames Trains passed a red signal - the now infamous signal and collided with a Great Western express on 5 October 1999.

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © Fire rages in one of the carriages immediately after the collision

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © Firefighters attend to the smoldering wreck of one of the trains.

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © Rescue workers battle to free trapped passengers.

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © Photographs are taken by the forensic team investigating the crash.

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © A poignant message. At the time, no one knew who was on the train.

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © people were killed in the crash

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © A word from the author: Q Did you write the poem at the time of the crash? A “My poems try to be truthful as well as accurately factual. I find the best way to make the poem live is to begin with the here and now. The poem was written, as you see from the details, on a train at about 8 in the morning as the crash was being reported on Radio 4’s Today programme. I was travelling from Manchester to Wales, not, as I often do, from Paddington.”

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © A word from the author: Q What is ‘the blazing bone-ship’? A “The coach which was on fire, containing an unknown number of passengers.”

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © A word from the author: Q Was it an image for a place of death? The station, maybe? A charnel house? A “I wasn’t thinking of a charnel house, though the words suggest it so it’s a possible image. I was thinking of the burning funeral ships the Celts used to push out to sea, containing the bodies of their heroes. I wanted to suggest something noble, tragic, heroic, because real people would be grieving, and deserved no less than the dignity of the noblest image I could conjure.”

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © A word from the author: Q Why do you mention mobile phones? They’re not very poetic. A “I hope I’ve made them poetic. It’s a poet’s job to use real things and make it into poetry. The mobile phone is the modern messenger of love and tragedy as well as chat. They featured too in the tragic events in New York on September 11th. At the time of the train crash the mobile phone’s favourite cliche, ‘I’m on the train’, was suddenly the most important message in the world.”

On The Train Gillian Clarke 1727 © The comments from Gillian Clarke are taken from her website: (this is an external link) The images are from the BBC Acknowledgments