Small Business Spotlight: Poetry Pharmacy

This month I sat down with Deobrah Alma to talk all about her business: Poetry Pharmacy, which is a poetry focused bookshop in Shropshire, England. I was lucky enough to sit down with Deborah over zoom and learn more about this wonderful shop.

KT: What inspired you to start Poetry Pharmacy? Where did the idea come from?

DA: Well Kirsty, I don’t know if you know about a project I was doing, called emergency poet? Have you heard about that?

KT: Yeah, I have! I saw a little bit about that.

DA: So, for years I’ve been driving around in a vintage ambulance, dressed as a doctor, accompanied by a ‘nurse’, first going to festivals, libraries, schools, music festivals, arts festivals, and conferences all over the place, and doing poetry on prescription. So, people encounter the ambulance and come in and lie on the back stretcher. And after a series of questions, I would prescribe them a poem. So that was a bit of a mad idea, but it ended up meaning I could give up my sensible job and made me just about a living. Actually, not really.

KT: A creative living!

DA: It got quite a lot of publicity over the years. And then there was a book from the project, which did really well. And the second book, which did less well, It didn’t have such a good title. I’m really old- I was a bit tired of driving across land in the fog or in the city of London in this vintage ambulance. No power steering, and it was cold and wet sometimes and exhausting. So, I had sort of been constantly peering into this building that I’m in now, which is the Poetry Pharmacy. I think sort of peered through the windows and looked at the dusty shelves. So, this long closed down shop and I thought it would just look like a pharmacy and I just kind of imagined the whole setup really from peering through the window and kind of bullied my partner into moving to a new house, getting a

stupid mortgage, you know, and kinda going “yeah, it’d be a really good idea”. He did. He did let me.

KT: I love that though. I love that you peered through the windows of a building for so long. That’s such a cool thing for it to come to fruition.

DA: Yeah, I know. It’s amazing that I did it actually. It’s a lot of work.

KT: That’s neat. And so obviously, for our readers who don’t know much about you know, that you are in the building, how does your Poetry Pharmacy work, just for people who maybe don’t know, or are interested in trying it, people that live nearby, you’re in Shropshire, is that right?

DA: Yeah, we’re on the borders, right on the Wild West of England, about a mile and a half from Wales. So, it is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. So that was a mad idea. And the high street has tumbleweed blowing down it as well. So, I, you know, I knew from the start that it had to attract people from out of the area, you know, it could be the, you know, this is the time of the death of the high street and the poetry doesn’t sell and yet, I you know, here I am doing this. But yeah, the, the idea of it and what it was for six months before the first lockdown, when things changed quite a lot for us, was that it was a kind of mini Poetry Art Center, I suppose. So, yeah, at the heart of it is the idea of poetry on prescription. So, it has lots of different factors that need to be in place for it to work, and it was an idea, and it does seem to work. So, we’ll go back to it. But, there’s a cafe with good cakes and good fresh ground coffee so that people can hang around. It’s important to have cake and coffee.

KT: Oh absolutely, essential.

DA: And, yeah, it’s to encourage people to come in who would walk past a bookshop or who would walk past certainly a poetry bookshop.

KT: Ah okay, I like it. Yeah.

was thinking I need to take my mind off this. In my head I was sort of narrowing down poets, you know, until I wrote them on paper, and then I’ve just kept crossing them out this one or this one, and this one. And I was quite surprised with the one that I ended up with, which was Louis MacNeice, bizarrely.I didn’t like Seamus Heaney much when I was younger, a bit, but I really love Seamus Heaney now. And also, I’m really into Esther Morgan, the poet Esther Morgan, and her title poem from the collection: Grace which I love. KT: Perfect. So obviously, the world has been out to say the least has been a little bit topsy turvy this year. Have you found that you’re prescribing more or like more types of a certain type of poetry or are people coming into the shop and buying more of one type of the poetry pills, is there one that seems to be better since 2020 happened?

DA: There are three bottles of pills that are going really well, the top seller at the moment is hope. I keep making these pills for hope and reading these little extracts and poems, so second to that is a happy pill. We sell lots of happy pills. And after that it’s existential angst.

KT: That’s 2020 right there. Hope, happiness, existential angst. I think it sums it up quite nicely really. So, how have you as a business connected with your community recently? Of course, England has now had two lockdowns, if I’m right. So, what have you kind of done, especially when you’ve been in the lockdown period, just try to try and stay connected to the people who are your regular visitors or just people who are interested in your business, what kind of things have you been doing to try and stay in their minds?

DA: That thing of connection for the Poetry Pharmacy is really important for us because we’re in the middle of nowhere, because it’s a bit of a crazy idea. And it came about really, because of the poetry community in a Kickstarter campaign that helped us raise money for doing the work that we needed, the wiring and the electrics and the heating and things here. So, I’m somebody who’s out there and friendly, you know, and I know lots of people, I’ve been traveling around in a bloody ambulance place all over the place for years. And so, my community of poets, and wider than that the art community is vital for

this small business? Yeah, there is also our local community who really hated having a shop at the top of the high street shutdown for 13 years. So, they’ve been extraordinarily supportive and lovely. So, it’s vital for us. I mean, what I’ve been doing, because I, one of the things about this place is it’s very grounded in print, in cakes, in physical connections. So, it has been a blow for us. But it’s a pause button, I think. I’ve been involved in and supporting other people’s poetry readings, and so on. But I also edited the: These Are The Hands poetry anthology, which is the NHS poetry anthology. I co-edited that and we’ve been doing lots of, as you might imagine, readings online. So, lots of things going on with that. And interviews I did. I’ve done quite a lot of interviews, there was an article in the I paper, the independent, where I was asked to recommend poems to people. So, it’s kind of sort of spreading but you know, it’s not the thing that I’m good at social media, I’m good at keeping up friendships. But other than that, we need people we don’t need, but it but the point of this place is something to do with a bit kind of retro, really, yeah. It’s a physical thing, a physical space.

KT: So, you spoke a little bit about how you’ve been staying connected this year. Is there anything that you’ve specifically been doing though, to stay connected just throughout 2020? Our theme for this month’s issue is connection, or connectivity. But it could be like staying connected to nature to the outdoors to other people, which we’ve spoken about a bit to art the creative world, which I’m sure you’re doing through the work of the Poetry Pharmacy, or to yourself, I think that a lot of us have kind of lost for a while and kind of lost a little bit of connection with ourselves, we have had to kind of regain that.

DA: Yeah, so quite a bit of all of those things really, it’s really important for me that I live somewhere beautiful. So, I can walk. And so, to be connected, I’m just looking out there now because there’s beautiful hills and sky and, on that side, I’ve got the beautiful countryside, and there’s the high street, you know, so it’s a good combination, but I walk with friends, that’s really important for me. And my partner who is a lecturer he’s teaching from home. So, you know, I feel my heart goes out to people who haven’t got someone that they can actually physically touch that must be really hard. But yeah, I’m

DA: And so, it’s to entice people to hang around and then, so that I’ll come to kind of the shop in a minute. Then there’s a consulting room where I do the poetry on prescription, although I haven’t done those much. I’m doing some online. But not many. And so, there’s the consulting room, which replicates the theater of the ambulance. It looks like a Freudian kind of room with a velvet chaise longue. And it’s yeah, it’s still quite theatrical. I’m upstairs in the distillery. I’m kind of looking across now to a great big table, that you can sit sort of 16 people around for workshops, reading groups, we’ve had poetry breakfasts, we had art workshops. They’re all around, kind of wellbeing poetry literature, wellbeing. And then we have a massive poetry reference library here. And we do book launches, poetry readings, all sorts of things. And then, but what the rest of it and this is the only part that’s happening at the moment is the shop. So downstairs, so at the moment, all we have is a bookshop, which is nice. But the idea, it’s an unusual bookshop.

KT: The best kind.

DA: Yeah, most bookshops have poetry in a kind of little subsection spine on.

KT: Yeah, a little shelf in the corner.

DA: So, what I’ve done is put poetry into subject matter into genre. So, if your heart is broken, there’s a shelf of books that deal with heartbreak, poetry books, but also books. I don’t know if you know the School of Life books? Yeah. Philosophy, some kind of good quality wellbeing, although not quite sure I like that word. But so, it’s psychology, philosophy, poetry, and wellbeing. It’s all about feeling better, how to feel better through literature, I suppose. You can go to a shelf if you’re a new mother there’s some books on that, or books for grief or whatever. So, the poetry is face on and front and center, and it’s curated so that people who are frightened of poetry can find the books that they need, rather than being intimidated by spine on titles.

KT: Yeah, perfect. I love that. Yeah, I think that’s such a good idea as well, because I think people can be so intimidated by the world of poetry when it’s quite a like, not an airy-fairy world, but it’s quite a nice community. You know, it’s quite a nice community. And it’s funny because when

I was growing up, I said I didn’t like poetry, and now I write it.

DA: Yes exactly! I believe that there is a poem for everyone and I’m just kind of a zealot at finding it. So anyway, we do things that, you know, we have a poem of the week and the window and passing by stop and they have a good look. And they read it, and then they move on. And we have a poem of the week and then on table as well, as people come for coffee on a little scroll, and they take that away with them. And so, I’m with and also, I do these pills with poems inside them.

KT: Yeah, they look amazing!

DA: So yeah, I’m kind of threading it as much as I can, you know, giving it away all over the place.

KT: And obviously, I love the idea that prescribing is portraying, I mean, I love poetry in general. And what does it do for you, would you say specifically, draws you to the form of poetry? A big question, but what is it about poetry? What is it about poetry that you want to share? And what draws you to the form of it?

DA: Oh, my god, it is a really big question! It can do so many things. And it can also drive you mad, you can have too much of it. So, edit that out. Oh, it does. It does everything that good literature can do for anybody, but I think there’s something about its intimate connection from one person as though to another, you know, it speaks directly to something, but it can be. It can be a curse or a prayer. It can be empathy, it can be a blessing, it can be something hopefully, it can be so many things. It can be beautiful. It can be challenging, it can be provocative, you know, I don’t know it’s too big a question.

KT: Yeah, no, I completely understand. So, this is another tricky one. If you had to pick a favourite poet - Who would you pick? And why? Even if it’s just one that you have, right now, or kind of one that you always find yourself going back to even if it’s a top five list.

DA: I saw your question. And I wrote three poets down, but I did remember doing this on a plane. I was on a plane once and it was really bumpy, and I thought it was going to die. So, I

doing it. I’m writing a blurb for a friend’s new poetry collection. I work in the shop, you know, so I’m connecting to the community every day and having conversations about poetry and literature and what poetry books would you recommend my 14-year-old granddaughter, or you know, so I’m having a lot of connections. Thank goodness, it’s important for me.

KT: Yeah definitely, I think this year has taught us all something, it’s that connectivity is way more important than we are though. I mean, I think a lot of people already knew it was important. I think it’s just really brought it to the, to the forefront of just how important it is to us to our being I guess to work and function as healthy humans.

DA: You don’t realise how much you need it, you think you’re doing okay. And then you make those connections. And oh, my goodness, they make a world of difference.

KT: So lastly, where can our readers find you?

DA: Well, we’re in Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire. And the website is poetrypharmacy.co.uk. And you can have a look around and see all the things that we do. Normally there’s an events page, which is sadly, almost empty at the moment. But that, you know, in future there will be lots going on. You can book a consultation with me there. There’s also a kind of gift pack where you get poems and pills in the post, and then the other thing that’s really been good for us is this bookshop.org, which is we don’t, it’s our suppliers will send books, but we can curate a list for our own page on there. So, if you look up bookshop.org you can look up Poetry Pharmacy in there, and you can see our curated list. So, you know, there, there are books for I called it for days when the world is too much with us, you know which is a Wordsworth quote. So, there’s a list of books for dealing with stress or whatever. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram so you can follow along there.

Words by Kirsty Taylor