We have been dispensing poetry since 2011 from the back of our vintage ambulance as the Emergency Poet at festivals, conferences, hospitals and care settings, libraries and schools, with a poetry pharmacy of poems-in-pills under the attached awning. 

The whole impetus for that project was to be a vehicle (pun intended) for poetry to be delivered to people who don’t usually encounter it;  to be inviting and not intimidating, to counter the widely held perception that poetry is “difficult, obscure and not for the likes of me”.

We believe that poetry can do so much to match or alter a mood, to assist in so many ways with good mental health. The Poetry Pharmacy was a way for us to park up the ambulance and bring the therapeutic effects of poetry under one roof, with an emphasis on well-being and inclusivity.

So the theatre of the ambulance was the way in. At the heart of it there has always been good quality, intelligent poetry. The Poetry Pharmacy continues this element of theatre, this light-hearted approach, and there is something here for everyone.

Deborah Alma has lived on the Welsh/Shropshire borders for over 30 years, where she brought up her 2 sons. She worked with people with dementia and at the end of their lives for many years and was the Emergency Poet in her 1970’s ambulance.

She taught Creative Writing at Worcester and then Keele Universities, where she was Honorary Research Fellow. She is editor of The Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology and The Everyday Poet-Poems to Live By (Michael O’Mara Books) and was the editor of the award-winning #MeToo poetry anthology, published by Fair Acre Press.

She is also editor of the Candlestick Press Ten Poems of Happiness, and was co-editor with Dr Katie Amiel of These Are the Hands - Poems from the Heart of the NHS and The National Trust Book of Nature Poems. She also edited Poetry Projects to Make and Do: Getting your poetry out into the world from Nine Arches Press. Her poetry collection is Dirty Laundry (also Nine Arches Press). 

In 2025 Macmillan publishes a series of 8 slim poetry anthologies to match the sections of the Poetry Pharmacy bookshops, commencing in January with Words for Love and Comfort.

March 2025 sees the publication of The Poetry Business School, Harper Collins, co-written with Mark Constantine OBE, CEO of Lush and Kate Downey Evans. 

Dr James Sheard’s most recent collection, The Abandoned Settlements was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Poetry Prize.

His first collection Scattering Eva (Cape, 2005), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex Award for Poetry. His pamphlet, Hotel Mastbosch, won the Ictus Prize.

He led the Creative Writing department at Keele University, and was often seen driving an Emergency Poet ambulance. He has since left his full-time position to devote himself to the business of the Poetry Pharmacy.