Online & Pop-up Events

This autumn, the Poetry Pharmacy is packing up its bottles, remedies and prescriptions and taking the dispensary on the road, popping up inside Lush stores in six cities across the UK.

Come and find our travelling team, browse the Poetry Pharmacy shelves and discover poetic remedies for all manner of emotional ailments. We’ll have our Poetry Pills, books and other remedies with us, and you can stop by for a mini poetry consultation too.

Find the Travelling Dispensary at:

Birmingham – 24–26 September
Leeds – 8–10 October
Cardiff – 15–17 October
Liverpool – 22–24 October
Edinburgh – 29–31 October

Open 11am–4pm each day

The Poetry Pharmacy comes to OVADA, Oxford, for a special one-day pop-up as part of After Love, exploring heartbreak and its aftermath.

Drop in for a one-to-one poetry consultation, or browse our travelling dispensary of Poetry Pills, books and poetic remedies for love lost, longing, loneliness, recovery and beginning again.

12–3pm & 4–6pm. No appointment necessary. Free

This project is made possible with support from a Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

We’re taking the darker side of the Poetry Pharmacy to the Bank of England Museum for the Dark Emporium: Books, Beans & Beats, a gloriously spooky celebration of books and the strange and unexpected.

Find us in the haunted book market with our Poetry Poisons, including Darkness, Revenge, Vices and Humbug, alongside Poetry Pills, books and other suitably dark remedies.

There’ll be independent booksellers and makers, a historic coffee house and live music as darkness falls.

Free, but booking required.

Bank of England Museum, Threadneedle Street, London

As darkness falls over York, the Poetry Pharmacy is travelling from Coney Street and setting up a suitably spectral dispensary at Ghosts After Dark.

Find us among the ghosts in York Museum Gardens, with Poetry Pills, Poisons, books and remedies for troubled souls, dark nights and other mysterious ailments.

Writing a full-length work involves a long haul, and the journey to completion is rarely linear. Coaching is a powerful modality which supports and strengthens your creative practice so that you experience breakthroughs and create inner shifts in how you relate to your work-in-progress.

Book a series of five or ten online coaching sessions with our very own Poetry Pharmacy coach Julia Forster who specialises in working with poets and who has worked with hundreds writers of all genres to support and sustain their artistic practice. Explore your individual and singular gift to create.

How it works

Book an initial, free 30-minute conversation with Julia here and then decide which of the various coaching packages you’d like to book. Blocks of five sessions (£325) or ten sessions (£520) are available, with the option to add on a four-night writer retreat in the stylish Writers’ Cabin in Machynlleth, mid-Wales.

Coaching sessions are sixty minutes long, held on Zoom and at a frequency to suit you. Julia’s approach is strength-based and compassionate and is tailored individually to each client. 

About Julia Forster

Julia is a fully-qualified coach, specialising in coaching authors and poets, who also hosts writers on self-lead retreats in a Writers’ Cabin near Machynlleth, mid-Wales. With a career in publishing spanning over 25 years, she works freelance in PR for independent presses and is Co-Director of Being A Writer at The Literary Consultancy where she facilitates the group coaching programme, Amplify. Poets and poetry festivals she has devised PR campaigns for include: Deborah Alma; Dean Atta; Inua Ellams; Jacqueline Saphra and BBC Contains Strong Language.

Writing a poem is a personal thing, but there are skills to be learnt too, especially where editing your work is concerned, and our Poetry Surgeries aim to help you through this process. They offer a rare opportunity to work one on one with a professional poet, who will address any specific difficulties you are having as well as giving in depth feedback on each poem.

Receive detailed one to one advice on up to four of your own poems from resident Poetry Pharmacy poet Rhiannon Hooson. Poetry Surgeries are by appointment and can take place either face to face at the Poetry Pharmacy, or online.  There is a £60 charge for an hour long consultation.

How it works

You will submit your work in advance by email, then visit the Poetry Pharmacy where you’ll receive private and detailed feedback on your poems over coffee. If you can’t make it to Shropshire, your surgery can take place online or via email!  

Our approach is constructive, supportive and positive, and you’ll go away with concrete ideas for your work as well as plenty to think about.

About Rhiannon

Rhiannon Hooson is a Welsh poet, author and editor. She has won major awards for her work, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and her first book, The Other City, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award. In the last few years, she has been a Literature Wales bursary recipient, a Hay Festival Writer at Work, poetry editor of Creative Countryside magazine, and the judge of the PENfro festival poetry competition. She has a PhD in poetry from the University of Lancaster, and spent time living and working in Cumbria and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, before settling in the Welsh marches. Goliat, her second collection, is out now from Seren.

"Rhiannon was always so positive and clear in her feedback and I have come away with a host of new ideas that I would never have attempted without her support."

- Tina Cole