Newsletter

Maria Wood- Poetry Pharmacy Review 27/06/2025
  Hello! I gotta tell you about this amazing bookstore I visited.    I pushed open the glass panelled door, and a smile as wide as the wingspan of a golden eagle spread over my face.    I stepped over the threshold into the bookstore. The Poetry Pharmacy, in Bishop's Castle near Ludlow in Shropshire UK. The first of its kind anywhere in the world.    To my left there was an apothecary cabinet stacked with small bottles, filled with capsules. On closer inspection, each one encapsulates a tiny piece... Read more...
12/06/2025- time and light are kinds of love
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter! Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas.  The chief singer of summer is the grass; it is the very voice of Earth, taking us into her confidence.Mary Webb, 1881 –1927, novelist and poet of the Shropshire hills and chronicler of the natural world. Diagnosed with Graves’ disease at twenty, Webb came to understand the restorative power of nature in a profoundly personal way. In her periods of illness and recovery, it was the fields and trees, the breeze and birdsong, that... Read more...
13/06/2025- not with skin but with water
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter! Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas.  Whether it’s a still pond at dusk or the vast pull of the sea, bodies of water offer more than their surface suggests. To swim in open water is to surrender to the natural world - a kind of immersion that soothes the nervous system, clears the mind, and often gives shape to feelings we struggle to articulate. To sit beside water is to be near something ancient and generous. It listens... Read more...
06/06/2025- I was a little tipsy on the dance
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter! Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas.  This week we've been thinking about the value of bookshops and how they are so good at making a space or place of welcome. The Poetry Pharmacy bookshops love to do that too, and we're unusual in that we grew directly out of years of arts and community practice- Deb Alma started working with people with dementia to assist communication through poetry, and then later drove her Emergency Poet ambulance offering poetry on... Read more...
30/05/2025- My heart is like a singing bird
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter! Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas.  June 1st marks one year of the Poetry Pharmacy on Oxford Street  It's our first birthday in London! And what a year it’s been!When we first opened our second Poetry Pharmacy inside Lush, on the busiest shopping street in the world, we didn’t quite know what to expect. We hoped to reach new audiences and show how poetry, and reading more generally, might play a therapeutic role in troubled times, or act as... Read more...
24/05/2025- and I began to understand what the bird was saying
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy's newsletter! Here you will find upcoming events, new and featured books, poems, prescriptions, and panaceas.Garden Wildlife Week 2025At the Poetry Pharmacy, we believe that tending to our emotional selves and to each other, must go hand in hand with nurturing the natural world around us. Just as poetry can bring beauty and balance to our lives, encouraging the wildlife in our gardens offers both a refuge for people and nature to flourish. As summer approaches here in the UK, our thoughts turn to the quiet transformations unfolding in... Read more...
18/05/2025- the most beautiful part of your body is where it's headed
Welcome to this week’s Poetry Pharmacy newsletter, where words are our medicine and addressing a search for meaning is often part of the prescription. This time, we’re exploring the intersection between poetry and philosophy—two practices trying to make sense of the world. They each seek to investigate some profound questions about human existence and the world we live in. TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets, is deeply philosophical in its exploration of time, memory, and the nature of existence. Drawing on both Christian mysticism and classical philosophy, Eliot reflects on the idea... Read more...
13/05/2025- Poetry Pharmacy News!
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy newsletter! Here in our Shropshire bookshop we’re gearing up for next week’s Bishop's Castle Walking Festival, with a fresh new window display to mark the occasion painted by local artist Saffron Russell. We’re also excited to be working on a range of new collaborations and projects. Our former Lab where we cooked up our poetry prescriptions is currently being transformed into a vibrant venue for workshops and events - offering us more room and more possibilities to connect with you all! As spring deepens and the evenings grow longer, we’re filled with renewed... Read more...
10/05/2025- To hear ourselves, we sometimes have to flee ourselves
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy newsletter! Here in our Shropshire bookshop we’re gearing up for next week’s Bishop's Castle Walking Festival, with a fresh new window display to mark the occasion painted by local artist Saffron Russell. We’re also excited to be working on a range of new collaborations and projects. Our former Lab where we cooked up our poetry prescriptions is currently being transformed into a vibrant venue for workshops and events - offering us more room and more possibilities to connect with you all! As spring deepens and the evenings grow longer, we’re filled with renewed... Read more...
03/05/2025- I want to say I think we are so beautiful
Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy newsletter where in the UK, we're enjoying some beautiful May sunshine and are now settled into our new production Lab, working on lots of collaborations and looking forward to a busy Summer. We said goodbye this week to Esther Cooper-Wood who has been working with us for the last 6 months on some new designs and getting our Shropshire bookshop and coffee shop into good shape. We'll miss her, but wish her well as she sets of to work around Canada for a few months. 100... Read more...
26/04/2025- love audible in water falling
Prescriptions for CalmApril is Stress Awareness Month, an annual event dedicated to increasing public awareness about the causes and cures of stress. This year's theme is Lead With Love - an invitation to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves and others in an increasingly confusing world.With the long Easter weekend behind us, those everyday stresses can soon stack up as normal life resumes. Recommended approaches for stress management are taking time for activities that we enjoy and that relax us. At the Poetry Pharmacy, we love to spread the word on kindness and... Read more...
13/04/2025- I still can sing
Multitudes of soft sounds make up the music of spring-a gentle stir of growth, the crisp rustle of daffodils against one another, the wind communing with young leaves;and the air is full of plaintive voices of small creatures  Mary WebbSpring is a time of new beginnings, and our Poetry Pharmacists have been enjoying nature's wonders as a remedy to the world’s confusion. While some of our team are seeking more wintry climes and nature on a grand scale in Iceland over the Easter break, this newsletter comes from a Shropshire sunny garden filled with... Read more...