Poetry Prescription: First Aid

This beautiful pocket-sized hardback gift book contains carefully curated prescriptions in verse compiled by Deborah Alma, the founder of the Poetry Pharmacy. Life is lived with feeling - and these poems will bring you reassurance.

Includes poems by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edward Thomas, W. B. Yeats, William Shakespeare and many more.

The Poetry Prescription series is the perfect antidote for life’s ailments. Inspired by the achingly cool Poetry Pharmacy shops in London and Shropshire - social media favourites with a clear focus on promoting wellbeing through the written and spoken word. Each of the 8 themed titles offers an array of poems to inspire, heal and comfort.

Whether readers are looking to find solace for times of ill-health, loss and grief, cope with matters of the heart, need poetic inspiration for courage and confidence, or want to find peace and tranquillity in wild spaces, there is a collection for everyone.

Perfect for reading aloud or for quiet contemplation, these books are a much needed balm for our busy lives.

Deborah Alma is a UK poet and editor. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools. 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 in June 2024 opened a second Poetry Pharmacy inside the Lush Spa on Oxford Street.

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