📘💊 Welcome to the Poetry Pharmacy

What’s the cure for a broken heart? You can find it now on Oxford Street in London, home of the Poetry Pharmacy. The pharmacy is run by Deb Alma, who “prescribes” poetry to her patients -erhm- customers to treat a variety of ailments such as heartbreak, grief, inspiration, and more.

🚑 It all started back in 2011 when Deb purchased a 1950s ambulance as an “emergency poet” vehicle. She toured around the UK, attending festivals, fairs, and other events and handing out poetry to anyone who needed it. Her business was so successful that she went on to open her first brick-and-mortar store in Shropshire Hills, UK.

• Small glass bottles scatter the shelves of her stores, labeled with various emotions: ‘love’, ‘invigoration’, and ‘pride,' to name a few. There are pills for ‘dithering’ and ‘existential angst’, while another flask reads: ‘Serenity: Keep out of reach of children.’
• Deb’s biggest goal with her pharmacies is to help people fall in love with the art of poetry. “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.”

Deb opened her second location in London earlier this year, and while business was slow at first, it only took one viral Instagram post for it to start to boom. The pharmacy exists in the era of “instapoetry,” a trend popular on the app that takes small bits of poetry and posts them over reels or photos for content.

• “Prescribing” poetry in small, bite-sized doses has proved most effective for the business, and Deb is hopeful that her customers will remember their experience at the Poetry Pharmacy for years to come.

💬 Bottom line: “In the absence of religious faith, we are all searching for meaning, for deeper connections with each other,” Deb told Positive.News. And the Poetry Pharmacy, whether in London or Shropshire, ​offers just that.