running along the hedge and into the earth

Strong-limbed like the oak. Low-slung belly sweeping the woodland floor. In the ink-black,  coal-black night I am a collection of shades. A liquid shadow, flowing between the trees. Just beyond your vision. Well beyond your imagination.            
Eileen Anderson

As the nights draw in, we turn to the darker shades of poetry — where mystery, memory, and resilience meet.

We're delighted to tell you about Badgered, a new poetic prescription, launched for National Badger Day on 6th of October. Badgered is poetry in a bottle that honours one of Britain’s most iconic nocturnal creatures. Each apothecary-style bottle contains new work born of Wild Writing workshops led by Clare Shaw and Miriam Darlington, exploring the wild, the wonderful, and the misunderstood, with the badger at the heart of the creative journey.

50% of every bottle sold supports the Badger Trust, who work tirelessly to protect these mysterious night wanderers and their woodland homes. Badgered is both a celebration of resilience and an act of solidarity, offering poetic doses of moonlit foraging and the quiet wisdom of the underground world.

We had a lovely morning hosting the Badger Trust to launch our collaboration at our Oxford Street Poetry Pharmacy inside Lush on 3rd October, in the company of naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham, pictured below with Mark Constantine CEO of Lush and Deb, and Nigel Palmer, Chief Executive of the Badger Trust.
You can find out more about the work of the Badger Trust at this link here. 


(Photos: courtesy of Gabriel Bush Photography)

Just as Badgered invites us to explore the hidden, nocturnal world of the badger, this month’s new collection from Poet Laureate Simon Armitage takes us into a different kind of quiet, shadowed space.

Simon Armitage - New Cemetery
This month, Faber publishes the Poet Laureate’s haunting new collection, New Cemetery, a meditation on endings, memory, and the shifting light between life and death.



Founder of the Poetry Pharmacy, Deborah Alma writes:

“In New Cemetery, Simon Armitage retreats to his garden shed -part study, part sanctuary - to reflect on mortality, memory, and the slow transformation of the landscape around him as a nearby cow-field is turned into a new burial ground.

These are poems of quiet reckoning, everyday observations blur into elegy and almost cosmic enquiry. Armitage remains the sharp observer we know from earlier work, but here his lyricism is pared back, his wit more muted, and his gaze turned inward. Echoes of Hughes’ Thought Fox reverberate in the image of the poet waiting in the evening for inspiration. I loved the ‘dark’ humour as waiting for the muse to strike “the sensor light / detected / no movement, / no signs of life, and turned out / the one light bulb.”

This work feels like a clearing - sparse, receptive, unflinching. As the seasons pass and the cemetery fills, Armitage offers a new space where memory, grief, and language converge. From local bylaws to the laws of the universe, he measures them all from the small, watchful world of his shed.”

We have a very few special editions of the new collection from the Poet Laureate, reverse printed with white text on black pages and signed by the author and you can buy a copy here while stocks last. 

Together, Badgered and New Cemetery remind us that the dark is never empty: it is alive with creatures, voices, and the quiet stirrings of resilience.
This week's subject line is taken from the marvellous badger poem by Alice Oswald, Bones and you can read the whole poem here. 

Seek out more poetic prescriptions at the Poetry Pharmacy — shadowy doses for the sleepless, the haunted, and the curious. Our latest collection, The Dark Side, awaits those unafraid of what stirs after dusk.

I have been here for centuries, walking the paths of my ancestors,

Inhabiting the same woods, silver-lit by the same moon,

earth-sanctuaried against the same sun,

year by year, with the certainty of the seasons.

Claire Appleby

Bookshop Day

Today is Bookshop Day - a celebration of the magic that independent bookshops bring to our high streets and communities. At the Poetry Pharmacy, we offer far more than books: conversations over coffee, open mics, workshops, a children’s poetry club, book group, poetry walks, and inspiring talks. We provide local jobs, pay our taxes, and proudly help our town thrive.

On this Bookshop Day, we want to say thank you for supporting independent bookshops, for buying local, and for keeping poetry, literature, and human connection alive. Every visit, every conversation, and every book purchased helps us continue doing what we love. Here’s to independent bookshops and the communities they nurture!

We are thrilled to celebrate one of our very own booksellers, Godelieve de Bree, who has won the Gold Prize for Poetry at this year's Creative Future Writers Awards. Her poem, 4% of the mammals on planet earth are wild, responds to the prompt “Wild”, and explores the untamed energy of the natural world and the wild instincts within us, moving between vivid animal imagery and reflections on human experience with grace and intensity.

We couldn’t be prouder to see her incredible talent recognised on a national stage, and Godelieve’s success reflects both her artistry and her dedication to the craft of poetry. Her work, alongside other winners in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, has been published in the CFWA anthology, and we look forward to celebrating her at the awards ceremony later this month.

Well done, Godelieve — your Poetry Pharmacy family is celebrating with you! 

You can read a few lines of Godelieve's poem, 4% of the mammals on planet earth are wild, below.
 

i dream creatures: coyotes swagger 

by bayous, mountain goats pedal

cliff faces, baby leatherbacks

swing their flippers toward the sea.

whatever unbolted fizz of wilderness

thrashes inside me, i resist. my frankest

Instincts—filament bright. under this

denim, in each epiphany of day, i’m animal.

everything i thought mine appears outside 

of me. friends. lovers. books.

- Godelieve De Bree

Poetry Prescriptions with Liz Ison

Pop in to our Oxford Street Poetry Pharmacy to meet Liz Ison, editor of ‘100 Poems to Help You Relax’ and maybe pick up your own complementary healing poetry prescription. No need to book - just pop in!

With Love, Grief and Fury
Paperback Launch

Join us to celebrate the paperback launch of Salena Godden’s powerful poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury. Salena will be reading from the book, which moves between love and loss, truth and resistance, offering poems that comfort, inspire, and ignite hope. 

Over thirty years after she first stormed the UK poetry scene, Salena has created her most audacious and definitive collection yet.

This is a free event with prosecco courtesy of Canongate Press. But do reserve your place below.

Join poets Roz Goddard and Jane Commane for a poetry spa morning of workshops and readings. We will explore the richness of our inner and outer landscapes where new creative ideas can spontaneously arise and be used for experiments in writing poetry.

“Roz Goddard is one of my favourite poets and Small Moon Curve shines with all that I admire in her poems: mystery, beauty, deep tenderness and a willingness to venture into the dark and light it with love.” – Liz Berry