The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul

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He is founder and Chair of Forward Thinking, a charity that seeks to mediate conflict in the Middle East and to improve relations between the Islamic and Western worlds. He is Vice-President of the Hay Festival of Literature, Chair of CIVIC Libraries Initiative, founder and Chair of Street Smart, Action for the Homeless, Founding Trustee of the Forward Arts Foundation and Trustee of the Grenfell Foundation. He is a former Council Member of the Arts Council England and Chair of its Lottery Panel. He has been a Trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The Arts Foundation, the RSA, the British Human Rights and Reprieve, among other voluntary posts. Although I didn’t think of it that way at the time, that may well have been the first incarnation of the Poetry Pharmacy. The Pharmacy proper began much later, while I was being interviewed at a literary festival in Cornwall, England, about a more traditional anthology I’d just brought out. A friend of mine, Jenny Dyson, had the idea of allowing me to prescribe poems from that book to audience members after the talk. She set me up in a tent, with two armchairs and a prescription pad. It turned out to be all I needed. The hour we had originally planned for came and went, and then a second, and a third, until, many hours later, I was still in there, with queues of people still waiting for their appointments. It is not uncommon for people to cry during the sessions. When I myself first met Deborah almost three years ago, I was surprised to find myself moved. At that point I was about to start my first proper full-time job in London and feeling anxious about how my life was about to change. I’ve got lots of couplets like that which hit me often – just relating to day-to-day events or what someone’s said, or a thought – it just gives a delightfully beguiling resonance to life. A way of understanding something in a different way, in a different light.” Then all the small securities you built about your house, your desk, your calendar are blown like straws; and momentarily, as if a scent of ivy or the earth had opened up a childhood door, you pause, to take the measure of what might have been against the kind of life you settled for.

Poems of the Decade brings together more than one hundred poems from the many thousands submitted to the Forward Prizes for Poetry in the first decade of the 21st century. I think probably more than any other art it speaks directly as though from one person to another,” says Alma, who published her own first collection, Dirty Laundry, last year. “It’s intimate and it’s empathetic. It can be a prayer or a curse, or something just to hang on to.” That, I think, is the power in it. That sense of complicity you get for how you feel. You don’t necessarily have the language to express it yourself, but somebody else can express it much more elegantly than you can.

From i’s Poet in Residence: ‘I find that poetry helps to lower my stress levels’

William, founder of both the Forward Prizes for Poetry and National Poetry Day, began prescribing poetry by accident. In the meantime, she is still sharing poems on social media that she feels will help soothe the difficult emotions we are feeling right now. The Emergency Poet

Founder of the Forward Prize for Poetry and National Poetry Day, William Sieghart welcomes you into his Poetry Pharmacy where he serves up poetic prescriptions to soothe the soul.With its stunning countryside, charming town centre, and world-class attractions, Oswestry offers an eclectic mix of things to see and do. I realised that we were on to something. Suffering is the access point to poetry for a lot of people: that’s when they open their ears, hearts and minds. Being there with the right words for someone in that moment – when something’s happened, when they’re in need – is a great comfort, and sometimes creates a love of poetry that can last a lifetime. She prescribed me three poems, including the one I have held closest to me ever since: Arrival by RS Thomas. It speaks directly to the reader, depicting them as a traveller who by the final lines can be found “catching this/one truth by surprise/that there is everything to look forward to”. It was not reassuring, but it offers complicity. Poetry is not a lullaby. Poems help you feel you are not mad, that what you are going through has been experienced by others. Take Recension Day by Duncan Forbes. His poem will not mend your broken heart, but it will help you wallow.