The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul

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I just love the idea of this - sounds like the perfect job, to sit and listen to people tell you how they're feeling, and then read them a poem that makes them feel less alone in that feeling. This was a cute little collection, although it did also start to feel a little repetitive after a while. In it, Sieghart basically takes a bunch of different circumstances in which someone might need a poem and then he makes a diagnosis and writes out a prescription in the form of a famous poem. Sieghart has made a name for himself as the proprietor of the Poetry Pharmacy, and he goes to events and listens to people’s troubles and then suggests a poem that might help them. Government scientist admits March halt on community testing and tracing for coronavirus was due to limited capacity Although I didn’t think of it that way at the time, that may well have been the first incarnation of the Poetry Pharmacy. The Pharmacy proper began much later, while I was being interviewed at a literary festival in Cornwall, England, about a more traditional anthology I’d just brought out. A friend of mine, Jenny Dyson, had the idea of allowing me to prescribe poems from that book to audience members after the talk. She set me up in a tent, with two armchairs and a prescription pad. It turned out to be all I needed. The hour we had originally planned for came and went, and then a second, and a third, until, many hours later, I was still in there, with queues of people still waiting for their appointments. In the meantime, she is still sharing poems on social media that she feels will help soothe the difficult emotions we are feeling right now. The Emergency Poet

This is turn led to her using poetry while working with survivors of domestic abuse and with people with dementia. This then inspired her to buy an ambulance, and become the Emergency Poet. The shop opened on 3 October 2019, which – not uncoincidentally – is also National Poetry Day in the UK.“We’ve only been open for a few months. It’s like to having a new baby. You love it, but it completely dominates everything. So I love it, but I also think I’ve created a monster!” Bishop’s Castle is not known as a literary hub. How has the community responded? The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2015 - Artists & Curators", Evening Standard, 16 September 2015. A bi-weekly newsletter for professional creatives: actors, artists, designers, directors, makers, musicians, performers, photographers, writers any anyone else who earns a living from what they create (or aspires to).

The project flourished and grew. The full history is in the book (which in the U.S. in e-book form is entitled The Poetry Remedy). The final session is a collective celebration. We’ll share the fruits of our new habits, and marvel at just how many different ways our group have found to bring more poetry into both our own and others’ daily lives. See the woods in a whole new light, as you adventure through the magical light extravaganza and watch the story unfold as you journey through the woods down mysterious paths exclusive to this event. Make marvellous memories as a family, and don’t worry if you aren’t the bravest Boggle – it’s spooky not scary! If we feared boredom, or being boring, more than we feared the consequences of bold action, I can barely conceive of the marvellous things we’d create and the spectacular lives we could lead. There is such huge potential within us, and within the world itself, and yet for some reason we choose to live lives of constraint and repetition. Imagine if we didn’t. The inauthenticity of modern life is so corrosive and so damaging to our sense of self, our soul and our sanity, that actually there’s something very, very powerful about the concision and beauty and lyricism of words expressed in a way that makes you feel complicit. That’s why poetry is so powerful in the modern era.”

Under five broad headings, this short book covers everything from Anxiety and Convalescence to Heartbreak and Regret. I most appreciated the discussion of slightly more existential states, such as Feelings of Unreality, for which Sieghart prescribes a passage from John Burnside’s “Of Gravity and Light,” about the grounding Buddhist monks find in menial tasks. Pay attention to life’s everyday duties, the poem teaches, and higher insights will come. These annual anthologies of the poems in the running for the Forward Prizes remain the best way of encountering the richness that new poetry has to offer.’ Daily Telegraph Keep up to date Having finished this collection, it was a great pleasure to listen to the touching testimony of William Sieghart about the project and the power of poetry, in which his love for the Persian poet Hafez shines through. Truly a marvellous collection ... There is balm for the soul, fire for the belly, a cooling compress for the fevered brow, solace for the wounded, an arm around the lonely shoulder - the whole collection is a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss' Stephen FryI wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. When I first started listening to The Poetry Pharmacy, I was blown away, and wanted to open my Goodreads profile just to rate it before I had even finished it. I absolutely loved it! In a way, I am glad I didn’t. To capture the true depth of something, sometimes we need to immerse ourselves in it fully, get the whole picture and not just that which appeals to us most. Having said that, it was still amazing, albeit less applicable to me towards the end. The brief answer is that I did a degree in creative writing in my forties, then did an MA a few years ago. I’ve had a poetry collection published, Dirty Laundry, which was me writing through a difficult – well, an abusive – relationship. And I worked with people with dementia for a few years, using poetry to assist communication. That’s how I ended up doing Emergency Poet: a combination of all of those things. And bloody-mindedness. Poet Deborah Alma believes we all need a daily dose of verse. As well as writing and editing collections of poetry, she runs the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire.

The hills offer stunning views of the surrounding countryside, including some of the best views of sunset in the county!

Danusha Lameris from Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press) Everything Is Going to Be All Right I liked the concept and premise of this variegated anthology a lot. A fine poem a day keeps the doctor away. As a believer in the power and the necessity of poetry, I cheer William Sieghart’s laudable mission to listen to people’s problems and administer a “prescription” in the shape of poem to those affected by what he classifies as “conditions” (mostly ‘spiritual ailments’ as there are, addiction, despair at the absurdity of the world, aging, the emotions connected to love, regret, self-recrimination, heartbreak, depression, isolation, various forms of fear, grief, lethargy, illness, worrying and many, many more - the array of human suffering is wide). As a devotee and promotor of poetry, having founded National Poetry Day in Britain, he understood that suffering is the access point to poetry for a lot of people and that such offers a momentum to introduce people to poetry as they are ready to open their ears, hearts and minds – and find poetry as a balm, a comfort, a smile, a succour, or simply a help to embrace one’s feelings in certain situations (infatuation, grief) The poems are presented in five categories, touching on mental and emotional wellbeing, motivations, self-image and self-acceptance, the world and other people, love and loss. I didn't choose them to illustrate my criticisms, but these two poems are placed in different Divisions: Collins in Self-Image and Self-Acceptance, Doty in Motivations. Note the conditions. He was left standing with blood on his hands and a poem in his head – Philip Larkin’s ‘ Ambulances’,which talks about the moment when one sees an ambulance on the street: I must have listened, over the last few years, to nearly a thousand people’s problems. This book, this project, is therefore a compilation of the prescriptions that work, for 56 of the problems that really matter. I’ve found that some of my prescriptions, such as the Hafez poem:

Fittingly, a doctor friend recommended The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Mind, Heart and Soul to me. I read most of it while too exhausted and headache-y to concentrate on a novel or look at a screen. Sieghart has collected poems (or short extracts of poems) and sorted them by what ills of the soul they might soothe. While feeling OK, I found the brevity of some poems unsatisfying. While feeling ill, however, this was advantageous. It is definitely a good book to read when you feel under the weather. Sieghart's commentary on each poem is thoughtful and well-judged, balancing sympathy, empathy, and pragmatism deftly.William is an entrepreneur, philanthropist writer and broadcaster with a distinguished record of support for the arts and literature. In 1992, he founded the Forward Prizes for Poetry and in 1994, National Poetry Day. Since September 2015, he has been chairman of the Board of Trustees at Somerset House. She and her fellow judges – Jamie Andrews of the British Library, plus poets Tara Bergin, Andrew McMillan and Carol Rumens – read a year’s worth of new collections plus selected poems from magazines and competitions before arriving at their choices.