08/03/2025- A woman who follows her own trail

In which our poetry pharmacists offer words of wisdom for making meaningful connection…

Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter!  Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas. 

To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to 't with delight.
William Shakespeare, from Antony and Cleopatra

Our most exciting news this week is the launch of Chief Poetry Pharmacist’s Deb Alma’s latest title, The Poetry Business School.

Sharing poetry is what brought about an impromptu friendship between Mark Constantine and Poetry Pharmacy’s founder Deb Alma. 
When the Poetry Pharmacy made it to the finals of Holly Tucker's Awards for Best High Street Business, it caught the eye of Lush Co-Founder and CEO Mark Constantine, as members of the Lush team had been on the judging panel. Mark contacted founder Deborah Alma to say how much he loved the concept of her business. This was to be the start of a unique mentoring relationship and business collaboration rooted in a shared love of poetry.  The Poetry Business School narrates the journey to the opening of a new Poetry Pharmacy inside Lush on Oxford Street. Mark and Deb share their conversations, insights, anxieties, business acumen and doubts, as well as their creative process, alongside specially selected poems throughout six illustrated chapters.  Each has coaching guidance from business psychologist Kate Downey-Evans.

The Poetry Business School presents an inspirational and useful creative pathway for how to do life and business better – with more collaboration, communication, and creativity.  By embracing ‘Business as a poem’ it is possible to learn how to tune into intuition, overcome fear, embrace risk, avoid burnout, and maybe turn vulnerability into strength.
 

 

Poetry Business School Launch Party
 

Deb, Mark and Kate celebrated the launch of their visionary business book on Thursday 6 March at Lush's London HQ in Soho, complete with cake and cocktails. Helping us celebrate were friends from Lush, Maya and our lovely Oxford Street staff, publisher Harper Collins, fellow creative business founders, writers, family and friends. It was a lovely party, with Jen Feroze providing poetry to order on her vintage typewriter. 

Further reading

Today we celebrate International Women's Day and here is our Poetry Pharmacy Booklist for IWD 2025

At The Poetry Pharmacy, we believe in the transformative power of words—to heal, to inspire, and to spark change. This International Women’s Day, we’re joining the call to Accelerate Action for gender equality.

At the current rate of progress, full gender parity is still five generations away. But through poetry, literature, and storytelling, we can challenge biases, break down barriers, and reimagine a more inclusive world—one where every voice is valued and celebrated.

This specially curated booklist is a prescription for progress—a selection of powerful reads that uplift, empower, and ignite action. From feminist classics to contemporary works of resilience and resistance, these books remind us that words hold the power to rewrite the future. #AccelerateAction

Today's title is a line from the poem Woman Running Alone by Maria Taylor, which you can read in full in The Poetry Business School and view here as a Poetry Film by Nine Arches Press.
Events 
  
Bishop's Castle
16th March 2025
Just added: Inspired by Landscape with Jan Westwood 
Poets, artists and musicians have long been inspired by the landscape. Here in Shropshire, we are surrounded by the beauty of the natural world. Jan is back to host another exploration of landscape through poetry.
Book here

Bookbinding workshop with Rachel Ellen
23rd March 2025
Join Rachel for a hands-on workshop where you'll create your very own leather or case-bound book using gorgeous materials
Book here

Oxford Street, London
16th March 2025
Bespoke poetry with Jen Feroze
Pop in to Oxford Street Poetry Pharmacy where award-winning poet Jen Feroze will create bespoke poems on the spot with her trusty typewriter.
No need to book - drop in on the day
 
Book of the Week

‘There is an honesty that is both heart-breaking and more hopeful than anything else I've read on this subject. She makes me weep and wonder in equal measure’ Hollie McNish
Eloquent and uncompromising, Swell explores the triumphs and hardships of the journey to new motherhood – through pregnancy, miscarriage, birth and beyond

Maria Ferguson’s second poetry collection is a raw and powerful documentation of one woman’s experience of becoming a mother. Against a backdrop of the sounds and sensations of daily life, Ferguson observes her body changing and charts a course through loss and wilting house plants, towards recovery, empowerment and renewal.

Tender, direct and winningly witty, Swell navigates the complexities of family and domesticity, exploring the contending weight and levity felt in this thrillingly unfamiliar new chapter. Ferguson is a poet as alert to the absurd as to the shattering, and these are large-hearted poems, full of life and thought. Together, they invite the reader to join them in a search for self-acceptance, for freedom from shame, and for a path to stability in increasingly uncertain times.