22/12/2024 - Merry Christmas from the Poetry Pharmacy

We have had an extraordinary year here at the Poetry Pharmacy. Opening our second pharmacy on Oxford Street has led to lots of amazing attention and we have had to grow very fast to meet the demand. It's been an exhilarating ride, often terrifying, but we've come through and we couldn't have done it without you! We're very proud to have put good quality poetry into the hands of so many more people. 

We'd like to wish you the most wonderful holiday season.

Merry Christmas to you! Love Deb & Jim and the whole, much larger, Poetry Pharmacy Team. See you soon! X 


In our last newsletter before Christmas, we wanted to share this beautiful poem by Richard Eberhart, and wish you all a Christmas filled with light among the dark midwinter days.
 
 

Further Reading

Allie Esiri, editor of A Poet for Every Day of the Year, has gathered her top 10 Christmas poems in a lovely article here, over on the Guardian.  There's also  an excellent argument for bookish Christmas presents in the form of this article on research that reading books has 6 times the benefit to the brain that digital reading does.
 
A favourite here at the Poetry Pharmacy, Susan Cooper's solstice poem The Shortest Day is brought to life by Carson Ellis' wonderful illustrations.
 

Winter Opening

The Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop's Castle is open until 1pm-ish on Christmas Eve for last minute shopping, and will be open between Christmas and New Year, from the 27th to the 30th of December from 10-4 if you'd like a coffee and time for some book-browsing.
On Oxford Street we're open until 6pm on Christmas Eve, Boxing Day 9am to 7pm and then as normal. Oxford Street between Christmas and New Year is a lovely time to visit; full of bright lights and a holiday atmosphere.  

It's become a bit of a Poetry Pharmacy tradition in Shropshire that because of the high cost of heating our lovely old building, coupled with our quiet town in January, we will be closed from New Year until Thursday 16th. Work behind the scenes still continues; we'll be doing some painting, programming events for 2025, working on some new books, as well as hunting for the perfect location for a third Poetry Pharmacy in the UK. Our online shop will remain open, for all your poetry prescription meds.

I'm also very excited to reveal the publication in March of a book I've been working on with Mark Constantine, friend & CEO of Lush, and business coach Kate Downey-Evans, called The Poetry Business School from Harper Collins, more details to follow but you can see the cover reveal here


Book of the Week

At this darkest time of the year, we recommend The Darkness Manifesto, which urges us to cherish darkness for the sake of the environment, our own wellbeing, and all life on earth.

Entire ecosystems rely on natural darkness to flourish, from bats and keen-eyed owls capering across the starry sky to the bioluminescent creatures of the deep. But constant illumination has made light pollution a major threat. By extending our day, humans have disrupted the circadian rhythms necessary to sustain all living things.

The Darkness Manifesto lifts night's veil to reveal the domino effect of damage we inflict by keeping the lights on: insects failing to reproduce, plants left unpollinated, countless hunting and migratory patterns eroded. Eye-opening and ultimately encouraging, this book offers simple steps that can benefit ourselves and the planet.

'A pleasure to read ... A paean of praise for natural darkness' Financial Times, Book of the Year
You can buy a copy here