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

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Autumn is a particularly beautiful time to visit Shropshire. The leaves on the trees turn vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow, and the countryside is awash in colour. It`s the perfect time to go for a walk, bike ride, or picnic, and to soak up the fresh autumn air. Persian or Iranian people say: “We don’t need a pharmacy book, we have Hafez.” Written 700 years ago, their poems have depth, range and contemporary relevance. Poetry is crucial for continuity. We live in a world of terrifying immediacy and uncertainty – Donald Trump has just said he’d be happy to take out North Korea. It is hard to protect our fragile psyches from assault. There are no easy fixes, but that is why we turn to poetry. Pursuing truths is worthwhile: the cupboard you thought was full of snakes turns out to be full of dust. William is an entrepreneur, philanthropist writer and broadcaster with a distinguished record of support for the arts and literature. In 1992, he founded the Forward Prizes for Poetry and in 1994, National Poetry Day. Since September 2015, he has been chairman of the Board of Trustees at Somerset House.

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. Loneliness is the issue that most often presents itself, in an age of social media and inauthenticity where there are fewer opportunities to reconnect and communicate on a genuine level. Prized Poems: Twenty-five Years of the Forward Prizes | Forward Arts Foundation". www.forwardartsfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 27 December 2016. There are also a wide range of traditional hotels, guesthouses, and self-catering accommodation available in Shropshire. So no matter what your budget or preferences are, you`re sure to find the perfect place to stay. The world has reopened and so has the Poetry Pharmacy: the powerful final instalment in the hugely beloved seriesWith its stunning countryside, charming town centre, and world-class attractions, Oswestry offers an eclectic mix of things to see and do.

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.Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK, and there could be no better primer for reluctant poetry readers than William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy. Consider it the verse equivalent of Berthoud and Elderkin’s The Novel Cure: an accessible and inspirational guide that suggests the right piece at the right time to help heal a particular emotional condition. People aren’t saying, ‘I’m miserable’, ‘I’m lonely’, ‘I’m being betrayed’ or ‘I’m sexually frustrated’– the last thing they’ll do is say how they might feel. One of his favourite poems is not something that would fit a prescription, however. “Something I hold dear is Aubade by Phillip Larkin – it was written quite late in his life, and it’s about lying awake at night and being frightened of dying. He manages to hold onto the thoughts we’re most scared of, and develop them and explore them – most of us just want to push them aside,” says Sieghart. “It’s bold, it’s stark, it’s straight to it – and it’s a fantastically moving poem. Whenever I read that at a reading, it stuns and silences the room.”

Visit Stonehouse Brewery. Learn about the brewing process and sample some of their award-winning beers. Sieghart chaired and authored An Independent Review of E-Lending in Public Libraries in England [8] published by Department Culture, Media and Sport, 2013 and was subsequently jointly commissioned by Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, DCMS, and Brandon Lewis, Minister for Communities & Local Government, DCLG, to consider and report on Public Library services in England. The "Independent Library report for England" [9] was published by DCMS in December 2014. In September 2015, Sieghart was appointed Chairman of Somerset House Trust. I was given an honorary title by the editor-in-chief a couple of weeks ago: i’s Poet in Residence. It came after a few weeks bombarding him and other colleagues daily with poems that I like.

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I am, but I do too much. That’s my problem. Which is ironic because I sit there listening to people and saying, ‘You must go out for a walk!’

Deborah has been prescribing poems for many years. Before the Poetry Pharmacy opened, she travelled the country in a vintage ambulance and gave poetry consultations at schools and festivals. Now she has a dedicated consultation room at the shop, complete with velvet chaise longue. There’s an exercise I do right at the beginning. I get the group to introduce themselves to each other by writing a couple of paragraphs – without using the letter E. The response has been quite amazing. Numerous replies came, many of them asking for more. And so I shared a Heaney poem (Digging), some Sara Teasdale, Yeats, Kipling and others over the past four weeks as I read them in the kitchen after helping, as night editor, to get i to press.

William Sieghart has served as a guest on our Therapeutic and Reflective Writing course, run by Anne Taylor and Victoria Field. In the introduction to his new book The Poetry Pharmacy, William Sieghart quotes the British playwright Alan Bennett. “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” There is something about the short encounter and power of poetry that enables people to go straight to the heart of the matter, and fifty per-cent of those who come for a prescription end up using his box of tissues.