A prescription for creativity at the Poetry Pharmacy

<div style="text-align: center"</divBishop’s Castle is a little town with a big personality nestled in the hills near the Shropshire-Wales border. Many of its colourful houses are adorned with illustrations, and there are independent shops and cafes dotted along the sloping high street. Near the top of the winding hill which runs through the centre of town is a very special place combining poetry, wellbeing and generous pots of coffee. The Poetry Pharmacy is a unique concept and is certainly more than ‘just’ a bookshop. Its bespoke wooden shelves are filled with brightly coloured books and pretty phials of poetry ‘pills’, with snippets of writing scrawled across the wall. It oozes creativity, and just begs you to linger and explore. Even if like me you don’t consider yourself particularly knowledgeable about poetry, it’s hard not to find inspiration from the words filling the shop. This even extends to the toilet cubicle which comes equipped with a pencil in a container and an invitation to ‘please write a poem on our wall’ and people have, in abundance. Pretty bottles of ‘poetry pills’ filling the shelves cover many emotional states & life events What started as ‘poetry prescriptions’ dispensed from a vintage ambulance at festivals, events and care settings by the Emergency Poet, Deb Alma, now encompasses three physical locations. Bishop’s Castle is the site of the original bookshop which opened in 2019 following a successful crowdfunding campaign. It took over the space of an Edwardian shop which had been empty for 13 years and the design is inspired by a traditional pharmacy. This has a personal resonance for me as my granddad ran a traditional chemist’s in my home city in Australia many years before I was born. The pretty teal exterior and giant windows, which allow you to peer in at all the lovely books, are welcoming and full of literary temptation. The shop contains a cornucopia of poetry compilations, nature writing and non-fiction books covering everythi...