Articles

What Have I Been Prescribing All These Years?
What Have I Been Prescribing All These Years?
People often ask me which condition I most often prescribe poetry for. It's not an easy question to answer, because every person who sits down in front of me brings... Read more...
Poetry for Grief
Poetry for Grief
Grief can make the world feel unfamiliar. It can leave us searching for words when ordinary language no longer seems enough. Poetry has long been a companion to loss, offering... Read more...
The Future of Small Towns May Be Living Above the Shop Again
The Future of Small Towns May Be Living Above the Shop Again
Across Britain there are small towns that seem, at first glance, economically improbable, too remote, too small, too bypassed to thrive in the conventional sense. The train station closed decades ago,... Read more...
Why Growth Can Feel More Fragile Than Starting Out
Why Growth Can Feel More Fragile Than Starting Out
Coney Street, York People often assume the hardest part of running a small business is getting started. In my experience, the more difficult phase comes later, when the business beginsto... Read more...
Making It Happen
Making It Happen
First comes the idea, the project, the sense of adventure. This is exciting. It’s like falling in love. Something chemical happens in the brain; you’re hooked. The approach to a... Read more...
Joy Gift Box Poetry Prescription
A Gift That Thinks Deeply
Our new Poetry Pharmacy Gift Boxes were created with that impulse in mind: to offer gifts that speak to thought and feeling, rather than appetite or fashion. Read more...
Solace in the City: a guide for peace between the concrete
Solace in the City: a guide for peace between the concrete
Victoria & Albert Museum, London As August’s easy amble ends and the months begin to turn cool, the UK’s cities fill again with students, workers, and other busy people eager... Read more...
Not Dressed at All: Intimacy and Experiment in Bloomsbury
Not Dressed at All: Intimacy and Experiment in Bloomsbury
Louisa Albani: Virginia Woolf in a London Bookshop    “It was late at night... we were not wearing white satin or seed pearls; we were not dressed at all.”  ... Read more...
We’re here. We’re queer.
We’re here. We’re queer.
Writing this in August, as the summer leans back in its last golden days, we at the Poetry Pharmacy want to finish off Pride season by celebrating some of our... Read more...
Making the Most of Your Third Space
Making the Most of Your Third Space
The idea of a 'Third Space' is a increasingly popular phrase, first coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place. Fundamentally, the term refers to locations... Read more...
The Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop's Castle
Personal View – the ethos behind the Poetry Pharmacy
"Here, the creative, the playful, the serious and the intimate, all intersect and interact." This article was first published in The Alchemy Spoon, 2023 I really welcome this opportunity to speak... Read more...
Poetry in Dementia
Poetry in Dementia
This article was first published by Lapidus in 2014 Although I have worked with people with dementia for the last three years I am not an expert in dementia, but... Read more...
Poetry and Empathy
Poetry and Empathy
The World’s Need So many gods, so many creeds,    So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind   Is all the sad world needs -... Read more...
Passers by browsing the pharmacy attached to the ambulance
The Emergency Poet: How I Found My Way to Poetry as Therapy
Article adapted from Key Note speech to the National Poetry Therapy Conference, Minnesota, 2018 There’s something quite wonderful about finding your people—those who don’t think it odd that you might prescribe... Read more...
#Me Too Anthology, edited by Deborah Alma, reviewed by Ken Evans
#Me Too Anthology, edited by Deborah Alma, reviewed by Ken Evans
Article originally published in The Manchester Review Feb 2018#MeToo Anthology: A Women’s Poetry Anthology, editor Deborah Alma, (Fair Acre Press). In Bernard MacLaverty’s novel, Midwinter Break, the author describes a tour... Read more...
Begin Afresh - Poetic remedies to lift the spirits and find comfort in the Winter season
Begin Afresh - Poetic remedies to lift the spirits and find comfort in the Winter season
In the heart of the winter (both literally and metaphorically, as the world is in such turmoil), the distilled quality of poetry can work its particular kind of alchemy, as... Read more...