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This week at the Poetry Pharmacy we’re turning our attention to one of life’s most complicated and fascinating subjects: ourselves.
Our featured book is Know Yourself from The School of Life, a thoughtful and beautifully designed guide to the lifelong challenge of understanding who we are, why we react as we do, and how we might live with a little more gentleness and self-awareness.
The School of Life have also taken over our York window this week with a glorious display inspired by the book, and we’re celebrating the collaboration with a lovely giveaway over on Instagram. If you’re nearby, do pop past the York shop and have a look in the window. It feels like a little invitation to pause and reflect amongst the bustle of the city.
One of the things we’ve always loved about The School of Life is the way they make philosophy and emotional intelligence feel warm, practical and human rather than intimidating. In his introduction to Know Yourself, Alain de Botton speaks about how difficult it can be to truly know our own motives, longings and patterns and how much calmer and kinder life can become when we begin paying attention to them. It’s a subject very close to our own hearts at the Poetry Pharmacy too.
If you’d like to explore the theme further, The School of Life has some wonderful articles and reflections on self-knowledge, emotional maturity and intimacy.
To be great, be whole: don’t exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.
Fernando Pessoa
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Our subject line for this week's email comes from Mudshrimp by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett from our anthology Poetry Prescription: Becoming.
This week Deb had a meeting with fellow Bishop's Castle business owner Bex Hunter of the beautiful Castle Hotel about the often sorry state of our High Street here on the Welsh borders and what we could do about it. Across Britain there are small towns that seem economically improbable, places too remote, too small, too bypassed to survive in the conventional sense. And yet some remain stubbornly, creatively alive.
In this article Deb reflects on Bishop’s Castle, rural high streets, cultural tourism, empty shops, mixed-use living, and why the future of small towns may depend less on recreating the past and more on building places people actively choose to travel to for atmosphere, conversation, beauty, music, books, and human connection.
It’s also a piece about something surprisingly simple and increasingly radical: living above the shop.
If you're interested you can read the full piece here.
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Book Of the Month
Our Book of the Month for May is Ripening by Sharon Blackie.
Blackie is an award-winning writer and psychologist, best known for her international bestseller If Women Rose Rooted, which drew on myth, folklore and the natural world to explore how we find our place in uncertain times.
Published on 14 May 2026 as a signed Indie Exclusive hardback, Ripening returns to the deeper roots of fairy tales, not as decoration, but as stories that ask something of us and offer something back.
‘Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.’
In this world in which all our old certainties seem to be crumbling, many women feel lost. Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.
Long before they became bywords for people-pleasing princesses, these old stories – passed down to us through generations by our peasant ancestors – told us everything that women need to learn about the world. They might be set in difficult and dangerous times, but they insist that their heroines face the unfaceable and dig deep for previously unimagined inner resources. They teach us to be savvy, inspire us to grow in confidence, show us how to be bold and claim the future we dream of.
More than anything, fairy tales are soul-food. They show us how to take hold of our own personal narratives and transform them into stories that might begin with trauma, but end with empowerment. They offer us images of startling resonance and beauty, while showing us how to recognise and make use of the possibilities that rise to the surface when broken systems are cracked open.
Enjoy a free drink with every purchase of 'Ripening' in our Bishop's Castle and Oxford Street bookshops.
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Write, reflect and connect in this restorative creative writing workshop exploring compassion. Open to all, no writing experience needed.
What is the workshop about?
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something H. Jackson Brown Jr
These compassionate words have prompted Katie (from the Oxford Street Poetry Pharmacy team) to create a new ‘Writing with…’ workshop: one that turns our attention to compassion. Over 90 minutes we’ll be warming ourselves up to get writing, talking about what compassion means to us and responding to some creative writing prompts.
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Join poet Jonathan Davidson for a Poetry Walk starting and finishing at The Poetry Pharmacy Lab in Bishop's Castle. Using a circular route, we will stroll along small roads and footpaths, stopping now and then to hear some poems read aloud in the open air. Copies of poems – by various carefully selected poets – will be provided, although participants are welcome to bring along short poems of their own to share.
While the walk will only be a few kilometres and therefore not too strenuous, it will involve stiles and quite possibly mud, so participants will be asked to bring along suitable footwear and clothing. We’ll walk at the pace of the slowest, the better to chat and enjoy the views. The ticket includes a drink and cake at journey’s end and numbers will be limited to 12 participants.
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Jen is an award-winning poet and creative copywriter who transforms feelings, memories and ideas into heartfelt, personalised poetry. At her regular drop in events at the Poetry Pharmacy on Oxford Street, she crafts bespoke poems live on her trusty vintage typewriter, capturing individual stories and emotions and turning them into unique keepsakes.
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 The Way the Water Held Me: Talk and ReadingWednesday 27th May, 7pm
Coney Street, York
Join Forward-nominated poet Catherine Redford for this talk and reading from her debut poetry collection, The Way the Water Held Me. A mesmeric plunge into the caring, grief, loss, and love experienced by a young widow, The Way the Water Held Me has been described by Fiona Benson as 'a gorgeous wound and wonder of a book' and by Liz Berry as 'a beautiful, heartbreaking book that charts deepest grief and deepest love'.
A Magma Selected Poet, Catherine’s work has also been published in Under the Radar, Propel, New Welsh Reader, and Lighthouse. She is an editor at Dust Poetry magazine, a Nine Arches Press Dynamo Poet, and a Writing West Midlands Room 204 Writer.
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Saturday 13th June, 10-11am
The Lab, Bishops Castle
Join Anna Dreda, former proprietor of the magical Wenlock Books, for her seasonal Poetry Pharmacy Poetry Breakfast! Read, share and listen to your favourite poems on the theme: ‘What The Roses Said To Me’ by Lahab Assef Al-Jundi.
Bring your favourite poems* on roses, midsummer, long days, short nights, Dawn chorus - whatever is sparked for you by this time in the year when nature is so abundantly beautiful and our hearts sing
We’ll read to each other over coffee and croissants in the bright and airy space of the Poetry Pharmacy lab, and if you want to come and ‘just’ listen, that’s perfect, too.
* published poems only please.
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Friday 5th June, 7-8pm
Coney Street, York
Join Yorkshire poet Patrick Lodge at the launch of 'There You Are', his fourth poetry collection with Valley Press.
Patrick is a much-published and prize-winning poet and this latest collection mines his Irish and Welsh roots and his travels in an exploration of who he was, who he may be and where he might be at home.
From climate crisis, Irish quays and Hebridean beaches to neolithic cairns, Welsh chapels, Irish sculpture, surfers, Greek islands and ending with a Tarot- based love poem in sonnets. "There You Are' moves through myth, history and ritual with poems characterised by Patrick's trademark sensuous delight in words and images.
Patrick will be joined on the evening with readings from poets Jo Brandon and Ian Parks.
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Friday 19th June, 7-8pm
Coney Street, York
Join award-winning poets Tahmina Ali, Bob Beagrie and Harry Man for a special evening of conversation presented in partnership with the Royal Literary Fund.
Part of a series of eight events bringing together poets, playwrights, novelists and screenwriters from across Northern England, this thoughtful discussion will explore poetry’s lasting power — how poems can comfort, why certain lines remain with us, and whether poetry can quietly alter the course of a life.
Together, the poets will reflect on how readers encounter transformation through poetry, and on the ways the artform has shaped their own lives. Drawing from the rich archive of the Royal Literary Fund, each writer will revisit the words of some of the country’s most celebrated poets, using them as a starting point for a wider conversation about poetry’s enduring impact.
All are warmly welcome.
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Friday June 26th 7-8:30pm
The Lab, Bishops Castle
Join poet Chrys Salt and musician Richard Ingham for an evening exploring the richness and complexity of North East India.
Rooted in Chrys Salt’s highly regarded collection The Punkawallah’s Rope, and born from her performance at the Kolkata Book Fair, as well as an immersive month spent in Kolkata and North East India, The Punkawallah’s Rope explores the vibrant textures, voices, and contradictions of a continent that is both dazzling and daunting.
Through layered poems and haunting instrumentals - played on a range of Indian instruments, including the aludu, bansuri and gopi yantra, by international musician and saxophonist Richard Ingham - the performance poses the question:
How can a middle-class white woman begin to understand and engage with this most complex and challenging of continents?
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Join us for this special poetry showcase hosted by Pat Edwards, featuring guest poet Kim Moore, with readings from Shropshire poets Kate Innes and Sarah Holland.
Kim Moore’s forthcoming collection The House of Broken Things will be published by Corsair in May 2026. Her second collection All the Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
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