In this epsidoe, I chat with Deborah Alma, the visionary co-founder of the Poetry Pharmacy, in Shropshire, UK, about how poetic verses can be the balm for our emotional ailments. Our conversation flourishes through Deborah’s inspiring tale of the ‘emergency poet’ and her evolution towards establishing a tranquil sanctuary where poetry is the prescription. The nooks and crannies of this episode are filled with insights into how the vintage ambulance that once delivered urgent poetic care transformed into a physical haven, complete with a coffee shop for contemplative sips and a physic garden where thoughts can bloom into written words.
My own odyssey intertwines with the narrative tapestry of this episode, weaving through a life rich with varied careers, from the bustling streets of London to the serene landscapes of Wyoming. Literature has been the compass guiding me across continents to my heartfelt involvement in community engagement, culminating in the creation of this podcast amidst the uncertainties of a global pandemic. Together with Deborah Alma's enchanting story, we celebrate the diverse and colorful lives that shape the literary world, reminding us that amidst the shelves and pages of independent bookshops lies the connective power of storytelling that unites us all.
In this epsidoe, I chat with Deborah Alma, the visionary co-founder of the Poetry Pharmacy, in Shropshire, UK, about how poetic verses can be the balm for our emotional ailments. Our conversation flourishes through Deborah’s inspiring tale of the ‘emergency poet’ and her evolution towards establishing a tranquil sanctuary where poetry is the prescription. The nooks and crannies of this episode are filled with insights into how the vintage ambulance that once delivered urgent poetic care transformed into a physical haven, complete with a coffee shop for contemplative sips and a physic garden where thoughts can bloom into written words.
My own odyssey intertwines with the narrative tapestry of this episode, weaving through a life rich with varied careers, from the bustling streets of London to the serene landscapes of Wyoming. Literature has been the compass guiding me across continents to my heartfelt involvement in community engagement, culminating in the creation of this podcast amidst the uncertainties of a global pandemic. Together with Deborah Alma's enchanting story, we celebrate the diverse and colorful lives that shape the literary world, reminding us that amidst the shelves and pages of independent bookshops lies the connective power of storytelling that unites us all.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly. Welcome to the Bookshop podcast. Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop owners from around the globe, authors, publishing professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice. To help the show reach more people, please share it with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 241.
Speaker 1:The poetry pharmacy is perfectly at home in an original Victorian building in the heart of the Schroppshire Hills in the UK. Within the store, you will find a warm welcome and a bookshop where you can browse according to your mood, from matters of the heart to days when the world is too much for you. You will find books, art and gifts, as well as beautiful stationery and artifacts chosen to address a particular emotional ailment. The poetry pharmacist is on hand to prescribe poetic medicine for a complicated mix of emotions or, if it's more, serious, lie on the consulting couch and have a full-length consultation with hand-picked poems by appointment only. The poetry pharmacy is proud to be a centre for poetry and creative writing with a focus on well-being. The distillery space upstairs is host to regular reading and writing workshops, as well as arts and well-being events, book launches and open mics. The poetry pharmacy was opened by Deborah Elmer and her partner, dr James Sheard. Hi, deborah, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here, hello.
Speaker 2:Mandy, it's just my great pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me. What?
Speaker 1:a lovely surprise. I read about what you were doing and I thought, hmm, Deborah Elmer needs to come on the show. What she is doing is fantastic. Oh, thank you very much. So let's begin with learning about you and your history with poetry and the leap into a brick-and-mortar poetry bookshop.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's a kind of a long story with lots of different strands to it. So I did an MA in creative writing. I am a poet, but I came to it, I guess. To start with I was working with people with dementia, using poetry to assist communication, at the same time as doing my MA and, on a kind of crazy whim, decided to buy a vintage ambulance. It's quite a strange thing Paint emergency poet on the side, dress up as a doctor with nurse verse with me and have a pharmacy of pills underneath an awning.
Speaker 2:And then I went to a poetry festival, a local poetry festival, and started doing poetry on prescription consultations on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance and this crazy idea. It was only supposed to be one. And then I was invited to two more festivals and then each festival I was invited to another couple of festivals and in the end it became my living for about nine or 10 years, pretty much, yeah. And then there was a book and a second book and, in the UK, quite a lot of interest in it. But after 10 years of driving an ambulance with no power, steering the country, I had had enough. I just felt too old to be doing it and working outside, and we, my partner and I my partner, james Sheard, is the poet and lecturer and we came across, in the area we live, a vintage well, an old iron monger shop for sale, and when I peered through the dusty windows I thought it looked like an old pharmacy, victorian pharmacy. And then again I had another idea to open a poetry pharmacy.
Speaker 1:I love how everything you've done is kind of morphed into this idea of the poetry pharmacy. But I would like to go back to the patience you worked with. As I mentioned to you earlier, my mom suffered from frontal lobel dementia and aphasia for three years. She couldn't communicate and I'm curious how did you use poetry while working with dementia patients?
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry that your mother had dementia. It's a really difficult thing, I think, isn't it for friends and family? It's very very sad.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's heartbreaking and tragic, and for the loved one receiving the diagnosis it must be terrifying. Anyway, thank you for your thoughts, but I'd love to hear more about your work with dementia patients.
Speaker 2:I was part of a project many years ago now where there was a group of four poets trained in a practice by a poet, john Killick, who had set up the idea, and it was to go into various dementia care settings whether it was early onset dementia cafes, but mainly in dementia specialist units within nursing homes or care homes just to sit alongside people and listen and talk to them, maybe take some prompt of some sort.
Speaker 2:We did kite flying and cheese tastings and wine tastings and I would write down verbatim the things that they had said and make a poem, a found poem, from their words and read it back to them or group poems. Or if we were doing kite flying, I would find some poems on kite flying and read it to them and I think what it did, I think and music is very like it. And if you read a poem with its very short narrative, it's something that's short and can be grasped more easily than a longer text. It has rhythm and musicality and quite often I mean in the UK lots of people of that generation had learnt poetry by heart at school and, like song lyrics, it was still there, it was part of a different part of the brain and quite often, people who hadn't spoken for a long time would join in, and that was very rewarding.
Speaker 1:I'm fascinated by what you said about the lyrical aspect of poetry. My mum loved music, and it was the rhythm, I think, that sparked something in her. Even with the aphasia, she was still able to react to the rhythm of the music. I wish I'd known you back then. I recently watched the BBC video about you and your emergency poet ambulance. I found it so touching. It's a reminder that poets really are the best editors. They boil every emotion down until it's just a few special words. They are such sensitive writers, and so, anyway, I was wondering what prompted the idea for the emergency poet.
Speaker 2:It's a really good question actually that there were. There are several drivers that's a terrible pun for going on the road with an ambulance. But one of them was that I had come out of a failed and difficult marriage and I wanted to turn that pain from that you know the pain I was going through into something positive. You know this was a kind of a dramatic thing to do to buy a vintage ambulance with my friends and family saying no, deb, don't do it, what are you doing? But also, all my life I have given poems to a friend across the kitchen table. You know, for a broken heart I've said go and read Derek Walcott's Love After Love, stick it on your fridge. You know, work at the words and make them your own and they'll see you through. And I think, in a kind of increasingly secular age maybe, that we've always looked for words and to lighten times of emotion. You know, whether it's weddings or funerals or heartbreak, it's a kind of natural thing to do.
Speaker 1:I suppose I'm truly taken with what you're doing. When I saw the people coming into the back of the ambulance and laying on the stretcher from the moment you started to speak with them very calmly, I witnessed their whole demeanour relax. It's fascinating to watch and a reminder of the power of words. The Poetry Pharmacy and Emergency Poet have grown to encompass the dispensary, the pharmacy, distillery, events, a physics garden and a London pop-up. Can you share a little about each of these arms of the Poetry Pharmacy?
Speaker 2:Yes, they're all under the kind of umbrella of the Poetry Pharmacy, which I guess is first and foremost a bookshop, but I would call it a poetry place. It's come out of arts practice rather than retail, if that makes sense. It's taken me a while to realise that I'm a business person. You know, I haven't. I'm not very good, or I've become better, at that anyway, but so I don't have the ambulance anymore. I was too busy with the, with the bookshop to to do that as well. So now we have a consulting room with a velvet chair's long in it, so it's much more comfortable.
Speaker 2:It's a kind of Freudian pastiche. You know the therapy session. The dispensary is our coffee shop where we serve freshly ground coffee in kind of pharmaceutical flasks, kind of boiling flasks. So the whole place is on a theme. And what else? So the distillery is our upstairs workshop space and poetry is emotional words or experience distilled, isn't it? Right back to the paired language. So we thought distillery was a good way to describe it. So up there we have book groups and book clubs, children's book group, book launches and open mic and lots of workshops. Oh, and the physics garden. The physics garden well, that was a kind of collaborative thing with some horticultural students who so it was. You know they did it for us if we helped fundraisers to buy the plants so that they could enter it into a horticultural show. And in the physics garden we have a very small writing hut with steps up to it that people can use and it's free to use. They can go and sit in our in our physics garden with views of the Schrodscher Hills. So there's that too.
Speaker 1:The whole concept is wonderful. Now is probably a good time to explain to our listeners about the poetry prescriptions and the pills, because they're not really something that you actually swallow.
Speaker 2:Only metaphorically. Yeah, when I had the ambulance I had a poetry pharmacy of pills under the awning, which was just I'm neat for people who didn't come into the back of the ambulance or were not brave enough to have a consultation or were just passing by. We wanted to engage them in some way with poetry at a festival. So I came up with the idea of these bottles of pills and they're actual, proper pill capsules, but inside each pill capsule is a rolled up scroll of extract from a poem and they are to address various emotional ailments, from a broken heart to exhaustion, to empty nest syndrome or all sorts. I think we have 50 odd different titles and when I opened the poetry pharmacy it was mainly to address the place that I had them, but they sell really well. They become something that we've got this kind of poetic sweatshop of people rolling these pills.
Speaker 1:That's a funny image you've just given us. So you have the poetry pills, gift boxes and the emotional barometer, which is actually a box of 20 cards to help us define our inner weather. Can you talk a little about the School of Life and the emotional barometer?
Speaker 2:We're a bookshop, you know. So we have the School of Life. I don't know if you've come across the School of Life. They're in the US, but they're a publisher of books. It was a small company that was set up by Alan de Boutal, who's a philosopher, and Sophie Howarth, and they set it up. I think you can get their products in the US. It's a very similar kind of underpinning, really, that they tend to focus on philosophy and psychology, and we have their products here, so we sell them on the website in the bookshop.
Speaker 1:And you have the pop-up shop in Lush in London, right?
Speaker 2:I think you have Lush in the US as well. Lush is they're the bath bomb people. They invented the bath bomb and I think they have about 900 shops all over the world. They're a pretty big company but we were in shortlisted for an independent business award and Lush were secret shoppers and judges for the award and thought we should have won, although we didn't. And Mark Constantine, who is the CEO of Lush, is a poetry lover himself. So we started talking to each other and have become friends. I've done quite a lot of work for Lush getting poetry into from bath bombs to their spas. In their gift boxes there's a poem, and so Mark explicitly is mentoring the poetry pharmacy as a business idea. So the pop-up was supported by Lush and is in their London HQ. That's been extraordinary.
Speaker 1:I want to have a poetry pharmacy here in Ohai. Yeah, we'll have a franchise. You can have one. I may take you up on that, deborah From Bath Bombs. We'll go back to poetry. Do you think poetry is having a rebirth of sorts?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot in the media about in the UK of the rise in poetry book sales. It seems to be very focused you know the best-selling titles on very few poets and I'm not sure that it quite trickles down to small presses and into the bookshops, particularly outside of those big names, but there's. I think what I'm trying to do is to be it's another terrible. I'm terrible with puns. I'm sorry I've become the gateway drug between, between the kind of rise of Insta poetry and the poetic literary establishment. You know, using my own love of poetry and knowledge to try and pull the people who are the lush customers, the Insta poetry fans, and bring them over to sort of maybe better quality writing. So that's my kind of mission.
Speaker 1:Yes, poetry has definitely taken over social media platforms, specifically Instagram, as you mentioned. When I was teaching art to high school students, I used to say to them it's better out than in meaning whatever emotion they were feeling, whether you want to write it on a page or you want to paint or draw, just make that first step, that first swipe with a paintbrush or that first word on the page when you are looking at a blank canvas or a blank page, you just have to start somewhere. You just have to put the pen on the page or the finger on the keyboard and start tapping. So for young people to have the courage to put words to their emotions and then to share it on social media, I think it's extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so do I. I think it's wonderful. I think they're bypassing the establishment, aren't they? They're doing it themselves. I think every other art music or visual arts people are confident of having an opinion, but poetry has been the one that people have come to at last. I think it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree completely. Can you tell us about the hashtag me to poetry anthology?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, yeah, over here we were all watching the Harvey Weinstein news with interest and I remember at the time watching well-known women being interviewed by men saying to them has this ever happened to you? And being surprised that it had. And as women, we know that we've all had some experience of inappropriate behaviour on the spectrum from inappropriate language to rape and what I did. On my Facebook page I have 200 odd poet friends. Answer the question which of you has this not happened to? And out of 200 responses there was not one. And somebody suggested that there should be a poetry anthology. Because they were all poets. I took it on myself to do it, so it was a real labour of love. I was a few years ago now, but the book won an award. It was on Radio 4 here in the UK. We had readings all over the country. It was extraordinarily powerful thing to do. Very empowering.
Speaker 1:And you're right. I don't think I know of one woman who, unfortunately, hasn't experienced a Me Too moment. It's frustrating and sad. Okay, now I have spoken with a few independent bookshop owners in the Shropshire area and, apart from being a stunning county, shropshire has a thriving writing community, so I'd love to hear about some of your local poets close to Bishop's Castle.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's a really tiny town Most people say it's a village and it's an active madness and optimism to open a specialist bookshop in the middle of nowhere. We're right on the Welsh border here and our nearest city is an hour's drive away, but it's an extraordinary place for poets and artists and musicians. The poetry community is very strong here, actually, although we also get lots of people visiting. We've become quite well known because it's such an odd place and, yes, I mean the. There's so many poets that in a way naming any of them means I'm leaving lots out. But there are two people that work here. I mean, I'm a published poet myself. Then my good friend, pat Edwards, who works in our coffee shop, is also a published poet and she runs Welsh Poetry Festival as well. And then Rhiannon Housson, who works here a couple of days a week, is a librarian and well-published poet. And my partner, james Sheared, was a TS Eliot shortlisted poet and on and on and on.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you have a flourishing literary and poetry community.
Speaker 2:I just have to explain that yesterday I went down to London and got back really late last night and we've had really wonderful news because we're going to have a permanent poetry pharmacy in Lush in Oxford Street, up on the first floor. So that's what I was down there for. So that's quite a big deal for us.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, congratulations. Londoners are in for a treat.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. You know, taking the art of poetry, which has been quite marginalised for a long time, and right into the heart of London and to Oxford Street is really wonderful to me. It's like a dream come true. So, yeah, it's very exciting.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is, and it's a fantastic accomplishment. I would love to hear about the people you have working for you in the store.
Speaker 2:Well, there are not very many of us, pat and Rhiannon. There's me full-time that works in the coffee shop two days a week, but she's a very overqualified member of the coffee in the coffee shop. She's a published poet and she runs Welsh Paul Poetry Festival as well but loves working in the coffee shop. We've also got Rhiannon Hooson who works with me on. She answers emails quite often for me and also works on events and we design things together. She's sort of in the background, not on the shop floor much. And then there's Becky Daniels who is what teaches at Wolverhampton University, part-time librarian and works here three days a week. And she's Bishop's Castle local person who's been here for years and knows everybody. And then beyond that we have two volunteers. There's Helga Rose who helps us with pill making and my good friend Judith Trostman who works volunteers mad woman in the coffee shop one day a week as well, but it's very small team.
Speaker 1:But you bring up a great point, and that is that writing is about sharing. It's about community coming together to share your pros, and in a coffee shop, what could be better than that?
Speaker 2:No, it's really lovely and it feels like the heart of the place because we do such a lot, and it's the top of the town. It had been a closed down shop for 13 years and dark windows, and I think we're part of making the town come to life again, which is really nice.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is, and I'm sure you're proud of doing that. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, Well, I have, I've just finished. There's a biography of John Dunn, the poet John Dunn. I don't know if you know his work called Super Infinite and it was by Catherine Rundle, and I'm half in love with the Elizabethan John Dunn. You know I play this game. Which which poet from the past would you like to, would you have fallen in love with? And I think John Dunn was my favorite, and she's fallen in love with him as well, so I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:Deborah, when, would you say, you first started on this journey towards opening up the poetry pharmacy way, way back.
Speaker 2:Well, it depends when you started from. But I emergency poets and by the ambulance started. Oh gosh, about 14, 15 years ago.
Speaker 1:And did you ever envision in your wildest dreams while driving around in the ambulance that you would have this incredible little poetry pharmacy shop and that the work that you do would be represented in Lush in London?
Speaker 2:No, no not in my wildest dreams and the ambulance was a kind of act almost of defiance. But the poetry pharmacy. I remember saying to Jim, my, my partner, who was more reluctant than I, was quite reluctant to do it, but I remember saying to him I think it could be extraordinary. I remember saying that, but I had no idea that there would be media interest in it. I think the the day we opened we had BBC Breakfast Show come and film it and I think there's something about the idea is maybe slightly romantic one you know the bookshop is is laid out by emotional states as well. So it's quite an odd together. But but no, it's it's. It's like I'm living in my own slightly fevered dream, rather than logical, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you ever miss teaching?
Speaker 2:Well, I used to. I taught at Keel University for a few years, but I was only doing it to keep Jim happy because we had an increased mortgage here. So I was taking up the slack from our old property in this one by teaching, and I had never. I'm quite shy, actually, and I didn't really want to do it, but I don't miss it. I don't miss the kind of adrenaline associated with doing it. Once I was doing it I really enjoyed it, but I don't think it's me really. I'm better in the background and I think maybe that's something that suits booksellers as a kind of bookselling type. Maybe you probably know better than me.
Speaker 1:Well, if I think about all of the booksellers I've spoken with over the last going on four years and there have been hundreds of booksellers I'm delighted by the different personality types, the introverts and the extroverts and some of both who work as booksellers, from people with PhDs of which there are many to kids working their way through high school, to retirees who just want to be around people and talk about books. And, for now, independent bookshops are safe places for us to have meaningful conversations. We don't always have to agree, but to be able to converse and listen is important.
Speaker 2:How did you come to this then, Mandy? What's your background and interest in bookshops?
Speaker 1:Deborah, I have had more jobs than most people you will ever know, from developing and printing black and white slides and prints for a TV company in Tasmania, australia, to waitressing and pulling beers behind a bar, to working in retail fashion, to working in high-end fashion in London, where I lived for a couple of years. Then I moved to Los Angeles from London and ended up in the film industry working as a stylist and costume designer, which I loved. And then for a while my husband and I moved out of Los Angeles up to Jackson, wyoming where we opened up a children's clothing store. After a few years we moved back to Los Angeles and I was still working in the film industry a little and he was working full-time in the film industry. And then for a couple of years I had a school for independent learners, mostly in primary school, elementary school. After a while we moved out of the city to Ohi, california, where we've been for about 17, going on 18 years, and up here I taught high school art and theater. I wrote and directed plays for high school students. I taught AP art and then I got into writing. I've written three books which are suspense, supernatural thrillers for adults and a novella.
Speaker 1:And then one day I was hiking it was early 2020 with a friend of mine, carla Olson, who is the publisher at Patagonia Books here in Ventura, and I said what is happening? What's going to happen with all the bookstores and the authors? And she said we've had to cancel every event for the authors, all the bookstores are closing. We just had a standstill, frozen. We're not too sure what's going to happen. So I went home and I thought what could I do to help, because I love independent bookshops and I thought to myself hmm, well, I could do something different. I could start off a podcast where I interview booksellers and bookshop owners and authors from around the world, and that's what I did. Six weeks later, I had six episodes up, and that was four years ago.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's just been a great way to connect with my tribe. I guess I just love it. But when I think about what I've done all through my life, it's always been about story, and so that, I think, is my connection with the creative art form of literature, which has since brought me to doing events for authors at Alincanto a Belmont Hotel in Santa Barbara, which is in its second year and it's incredibly successful. And then in May I'm taking over as the events coordinator for Bart's Books here in Ohio and I worked there a couple of days a week. I just love it. I love selling books to people.
Speaker 2:I love it, and you haven't been tempted to open your own bookshop.
Speaker 1:My husband has suggested that idea on more than one occasion. You know, since mum died of dementia, it's important to me to keep using my brain and to keep learning new things and to be around all kinds of people. That is so important to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a wonderful thing to do. That isn't it? Yes, it is, and I feel very lucky. Deborah, thank you so much for being on the show, but also for everything you do with the Poetry Pharmacy. I think you are wonderful. I think you've had great ideas. You deserve every bit of success, especially with Lush in London. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, maddie, it's been my great pleasure.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with poet and co-owner of the Poetry Pharmacy, deborah Alma. To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to the bookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy Adrian Otterhan and graphic design by Francis Verralla. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.