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https://www.positive.news/society/the-pharmacy-that-dispenses-poems-instead-of-medicine/>
"What’s the cure for a broken heart? What about for grief, anxiety or
loneliness? For those visiting the Poetry Pharmacy – customers or patients,
depending how you see them – it’s these questions that are on their minds. The
company’s new London bookshop, on Oxford Street, offers tonics to those sorts
of emotional ailments. Calm, comfort, inspiration: whatever you’re searching
for, there’s a book of poetry, philosophy or psychology to help you find it.
From the metaphysical poets to the romantics, poetry has long had the ability
to speak to parts of our soul. When prose fails, often only verse has the
answer, says Poetry Pharmacy founder Deb Alma. “At weddings and funerals, it’s
a poem that’s read,” she points out. “It’s the art that people in states of
heightened emotion turn to.”
Under the UK educational system, poetry is treated as something to be carefully
dissected rather than enjoyed, often pushing teenagers to become either angsty
teenage poets themselves or full-on haters of the stuff. But over the last
decade, this has changed rapidly. Thanks to the birth of so-called
‘instapoetry’, popularised by Rupi Kaur and her bestselling 2014
collection
milk & honey, young people are reading poetry again.
Writers like Hollie McNish and Mercury prize nominee Kae Tempest have become
rock stars of the genre. Even singer Lana Del Rey has released her own
collection. Last year – thanks to the continued success of instapoetry and
a revolutionary new translation of Homer – marked the highest sales of poetry
since accurate records began.
With its expansive library of brightly coloured books, the Poetry Pharmacy is
every poetry fan’s dream. Alma knows that lyrical writing alone won’t cure
anyone of life’s greatest traumas. Instead, the London branch – situated above
Lush’s heavily scented flagship store – serves as a pastiche of the idea that
words cure all. The centrepiece is a rich mahogany cabinet containing small
glass bottles labelled with various emotions: ‘love’, ‘invigoration’, a
rainbow-coloured ‘pride’. Some are more tongue-in-cheek. There are pills for
‘dithering’ and ‘existential angst’, while a glass flask sat atop reads:
‘Serenity: Keep out of reach of children.’
It’s aesthetically pleasing quirks like these that have made London’s Poetry
Pharmacy store a huge hit on social media. In the two months since opening, the
place has been near-constantly buzzing, with customers dropping in to buy
gifts, sitting with a coffee from the ‘dispensary’ to read and ruminate, and
many documenting the whole thing for social media.
Alma, the brainchild behind the operation, couldn’t be happier about it. She
speaks to me over Zoom from a room backstage at the much larger original store
in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, from where she still orders all the stock for
both outlets. The last few months have been pretty “overwhelming”, she admits."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
