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LOCATION 5
Poetry Pharmacy // Bishop’s Castle
“You can take somebody to a place in a poem
without them actually having to be there.
They are there in their head” ~ Deborah Alma (2019)
An olde worlde apothecary shop in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, gives voice to the ways in which poetry can heal and soothe us.
The words and voice of this poem are taken from an audio interview I gathered as part of my MA in 2019, with Deborah Alma; the Emergency Poet who founded the Poetry Pharmacy. I lifted, redacted, and remixed the messages from a transcribed version of the interview, to create a poem about poetry.
The interview was captured on the Stiperstones – a quartzite hilltop in Shropshire – just before the pharmacy came to fruition. The footage was gathered in 2021, when the pharmacy was poised to re-open just after a long period of lockdown from the Covid pandemic.
The combination of audiovisuals from two different periods is set against other markers of time; the long heritage of the building and the enduring nature of poetry – as a means of connection and a tool for wellbeing.
Poetry Pharmacy