Poetry Prescription

The Poetry Prescription series is eight fun, clever and stylish books all giving poetic cures for life’s ailments. There is a book for every type of reader, providing whatever help they need, whether that’s encouragement, inspiration, or a quiet moment of reflection. Join Deborah Alma in conversation with local poet Juliette Hart, discussing her journey from the Emergency Poet to the Poetry Pharmacy, dispensing prescriptions of poetry. The event will also include a live poetry consultation and some readings from the anthologies.

Deborah Alma is a UK poet, editor and teacher. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools and lectured at both Worcester and Keele universities. From 2012 she was the Emergency Poet offering poetry on prescription from her vintage ambulance. She co-founded the world’s first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire with her partner the poet James Sheard in 2019 and now has a second Poetry Pharmacy inside LUSH on Oxford Street, with plans for another in the UK later in 2025.

She is editor of Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology, The Everyday Poet, #Me Too – rallying against sexual harassment- a women’s poetry anthology, Ten Poems of Happiness from Candlestick Press and co-edited with Dr Katie Amiel These Are the Hands-Poems from the Heart of the NHS. She is editor of National Trust- Nature Poems published April 2023. Poetry Projects to Make and Do, Nine Arches Press, 2023. Poetry Prescription series with Pan Macmillan, 8 titles 2025. Her first full collection Dirty Laundry is published by Nine Arches Press.