winds footing swift

Hello and welcome to this week’s newsletter,

Here in the UK, autumn is settling in: with some beautiful crisp mornings and blustery nights. It’s the sort of weather that calls for long walks, hot drinks, hearty meals and a good book by the fire.

With Halloween just around the corner, we feel that we have permission to take a closer look at the darker side of poetry and literature. From ancient ballads and tales of witchcraft to the Gothic imagination of the nineteenth century, writers have long been drawn to the strange, the unsettling and the macabre. Poetry has a way of giving voice to the things we might otherwise keep to ourselves: our grudges and wicked thoughts, our temptations and bad behaviour, our spite, revenge and fury. Poets have long taken this closer look at the whole of what it is to be human.

At the Poetry Pharmacy, we believe there’s good reason to make room for these darker feelings, too. Poetry can help us look our fears in the eye, find humour in the absurd and recognise something of ourselves in the less flattering corners of human nature. Sometimes, it’s comforting to know we’re not the only ones with a wicked thought or two.

So, this week, we’re embracing the season with a little literary mischief, exploring poetry’s more mysterious side and dispensing a few poisons of our own. Whether you’re after a suitably dark read, an unusual Halloween gift or simply a few words to keep you company as the nights draw in, we have a prescription for the season.

Our subject line is from Thomas Hardy's poem below.

Night-Time in Mid-Fall, from Darkness

It is a storm-strid night, winds footing swift
through the blind profound;
I know the happenings from their sound;
Leaves totter down still green, and spin and drift;
The tree-trunks rock to their roots, which wrench and lift
The loam where they run onward underground.

The streams are muddy and swollen; eels migrate
to a new abode;
Even cross, 'tis said, the turnpike-road;
(Men's feet have felt their crawl, home-coming late):
The westward fronts of the towers are saturate,
Church-timbers crack, and witches ride abroad.

Thomas Hardy

Our Poetry Poison anthologies are perfect for discovering poets whose work explores the darker side of human nature. Revenge, Darkness, Vice and Humbug delve into grudges and wicked thoughts, temptation and bad behaviour, spite and fury, with a little Gothic gloom and deliciously dark humour along the way.
  

Accompanying each anthology is a little bottle of poetic poison, filled with carefully chosen words to indulge your darker side. Poetry Pharmacists recommend taking in measured doses. If bitterness sharpens, follow with something more restorative.

Discover more of the Poison Cabinet, including our Boxed Poison gift boxes here.
 
 

For lovers of the unusual, A Midnight Treasury of Macabre and Weird Poems offers a curious collection of strange, unsettling and wonderfully offbeat verse, while New Cemetery by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage explores themes of mortality, memory and the traces we leave behind, with his characteristic wit and insight.
 

These badges by The Literary Emporium are the perfect adornment for book lovers, poetry enthusiasts and anyone who likes to wear their literary allegiances with pride. Discover more of the range here.
 

Our Book of the Month is back in stock

Rhapsody by Alice Oswald.
Alice Oswald goes in search of poetry in its original, wildest form – before it was written down, before it belonged to a single voice – and finds it still speaking all around us.
What begins as an attempt to ‘interview’ Homer becomes a thrilling exploration of an anonymous tradition that exists beyond authorship, spanning a world of singers, storytellers, mourners and listeners, of nightingales, grasshoppers and rivers.
Zigzagging through ballads, riddles, pibrochs, drama, interviews, artificial intelligence and sonnets, Rhapsody is a restless, miraculous exploration of poetry in its most vital form, and a resounding manifesto for the oral tradition.
At once intimate and expansive, Oswald invites us to listen to the voices that shape us, and to recognise poetry not as a solitary, written art, but as a communal, essential human inheritance.

Available in all 3 Poetry Pharmacies and you can get a copy delivered to your door from us here. 

Come and find our very mini Poetry Pharmacy dispensary inside the store, stocked with Poetry Pills and poetic remedies for all manner of emotional ailments.

Our Poetry Pharmacist will be there from 11am–4pm!

 

We're off to Edinburgh next, for the last one in this fun tour!
From Thursday 29th to Saturday 31st of October inside LUSH. 

Events
Click the links to take you directly to events in 
York, Bishop's Castle, Oxford Street and Online & Pop-Ups

Expect bitter remedies, venomous verses, streams of foul curses, spite, vengeance & wickedness with readings from some of the poets whose work festers within the covers. Come and drink deep from the poison cup.

Readers include: Helen Ivory, Jill Abram, Kathy Pimlott, Joshua Seigal & Suzi Feay.

Join Jan Westwood for a guided exploration of John Donne’s poetry and why it remains so relevant to today’s reader.

Born in 1572, Donne lived in a complex and divided society, and his poetry explores many themes that still resonate today, including love, sex, death and religion. His work is known for its drama, wit, intensity, paradox and wonderfully inventive use of language.

Jan will take us on a journey through the work of this magnificent poet and fascinating man, exploring what makes his poetry so enduring.

Ticket price includes tea or coffee and cake!