World War Two Reading Recommendations

in

Revisiting my blog about ‘Strange Meeting’ led me to thinking about how books and poetry have brought war to life for me in a way that studying history never could, so I thought I’d gather some of my recommendations for books set during World War II. I have my eye on The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, because I love her books but have somehow never read that one, but let me know if there are other books set in the period I should look out for.

Testament.jpg

Testament by Kim Sherwood

I was lucky enough to work on the publicity for this astonishing debut novel, which won Kim the Bath Novel Prize and saw her shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. After her beloved grandfather’s death, Eva uncovers his hidden history as a survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary. It’s tender, beautifully written, humane, absorbing and deeply important. There’s a country we can almost recognise that welcomed child survivors of the Nazi camps to the Lake District to heal, and I will read everything Kim writes forever.

Life After Life.jpg

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Not exclusively set during World War Two, but partly so, and this is one of my favourite books of all time. I could also include the sequel A God in Ruins - though it was a little plane-heavy for me - here. It’s an exquisite novel in which a baby born in a snowstorm in 1910 has the chance to live through the twentieth century again and again - a conceit Atkinson pulls off with dazzling dexterity. An unmissable book.

Transcription.JPG

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

So good I include her two and a half times! Transcription is witty and knowing and rattles along at a brilliant pace, all cigarette smoke and paranoia and lacklustre sandwiches in 1940s London. This tale of covert MI5 operations flicks between Dolphin Square and the shabby corridors of the post-war BBC. The bewildering, half-farcical web of agents all over London is entertainingly sketched - the loyalties and motivations of most of the characters (and half the passers by) are questionable at best. And the language is period-perfect, all smart, clipped retorts and elegant slang.

The Nightingale.jpg

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

It took me a while to warm up to this book - I found the opening a bit cheesy - but I ended up completely gripped and invested in this story of the fates of two sisters set in Occupied France during World War II. Aspects of the plot are based on real events and Hannah’s depiction of the horrors of war is shocking and haunting. I enjoyed it far more than The Alice Network, also set in Occupied France - partly because I am British and of a certain vintage and therefore couldn’t take an evil cafe owner called Rene seriously. (I bid Good Moaning to everyone who got this reference.)

The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe.jpg

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis

I’m stretching a point here as obviously most of the action takes place in Narnia, but the war casts a long shadow over this book, published in 1950. As a child, I didn’t spare a thought for the parents in London whose children, like the Pevensies, were evacuated to the countryside to stay in the homes of strangers - something that strikes me as unbearably poignant now.

Our Man in New York.jpg

Our Man in New York by Henry Hemming

Another book I was lucky enough to work on, this is non-fiction so gripping it reads like a novel, telling the true history of the Fake News and cunning tricks used by MI6 to bring America into the Second World War, from setting up a Canadian forgery factory to paying astrologers to protect Hitler’s death. Le Carré meets Mad Men, this book manages to increate incredible tension despite the fact we know the ending - and there are plenty of lessons for today, as questions about governments interfering in other nation’s political processes continue to be raised.

Also recommended:

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada - incredibly powerful story of one man’s resistance to the Nazi regime

If This Is A Man by Primo Levi - the essential, unforgettable memoir of Levi’s time in a Nazi concentration camp

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky - an incredibly moving novel written and set in Occupied France, published after the author’s death in Auschwitz

The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak - inventive, beautifully written and deeply affecting novel which also celebrates the redemptive power of books

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - surreal and darkly funny, and responsible for making me think of ‘crab-apple cheeks’ every time I see a crab-apple tree

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - powerful and strange novel with science-fiction elements about the Allied bombing of Dresden

Atonement by Ian McEwan - I love this novel, and reading it while we lived in Balham (back when Balham was much less posh) made it extra poignant

Please note that this post includes affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no expense to you) when you buy through these links.

On 'Strange Meeting'

in

When I was fifteen, I had words on my wall. Between the pictures of Kurt Cobain, Withnail and Bagpuss I taped up my favourite poems: Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’, Wilfred Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. (I would have felt it necessary to defend Bob’s inclusion at the time, but a Nobel Prize for Literature is a good passport to the pantheon of poets in anyone’s book.) ‘Fern Hill’ is all beauty, a hymn of pleasure tinged with the delicious ache of a nostalgia I was too young to really understand. ‘Mr Tambourine Man’’s lines about dancing beneath the diamond sky chimed with all the yearning for hedonistic beach parties a landlocked British teenager could muster (a lot). But why Wilfred?

I studied the First World War in class, like generations of school children since that cataclysm. We traced the underlying causes – the webs of European alliances, the scramble for arms, the rallying drumbeat of nationalism – and the fate of Franz Ferdinand. We learnt about the battles, the tactics and the casualties. But it wasn’t until we began to read war poetry that the terrors endured by the men - boys, really, most of them – came alive for me.

WW1 Poetry.jpg

The Great War encouraged thousands to put pen to paper, producing plays and novels as well as poetry. Ordinary people turned to writing to process their experiences, and a generation of ‘trench poets’ sprang up almost overnight. In 1916 a canny London publisher printed an anthology called Soldier Poets: Songs of the Fighting Men – with a portable lightweight edition for the boys at the Front – and a second volume followed in 1918. Rupert Brooke’s patriotic war poetry and tragic death – from a mosquito bite, rather than in action – set the tone and his 1914 and Other Poems became a runaway bestseller. The disenchanted work of poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Owen found few fans at the time.

After the Armistice in November 1918 most of the war poets stopped writing – nobody mention the war – and only Brooke continued to sell in any numbers, bringing comfort to a grieving nation. However, at the end of the 1920s controversial memoirs of life in the trenches including Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front began to appear. These books ate away at any remaining illusions about the conflict. The writers whose patriotism turned to horrified disgust in the face of that war’s horrors are the ones whose words touch us most deeply now.

‘Strange Meeting’ is a work of hallucinatory horror. The epic language – vain citadels, blood-clogged chariot wheels, the swiftness of the tigress – evokes the colossal scale of the tragedy. Owen forces the reader to contemplate the squandered value of every one of the millions of lives lost, on both sides. Owen met Sassoon while recovering from shell shock in Scotland – ‘Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were’. Both men longed to close the vast gap of understanding between the troops at the Front and those left behind in Blighty, and ‘Strange Meeting’ is part of that quest. It is an enormous poem, straining with emotion, but written with extraordinary control. The unsettling half-rhymes (swiftness/tigress) and pararhymes (hall/Hell; groined/groaned) are designed to disturb. The time was out of joint; easy rhyme and gentle rhythm would be a betrayal of Owen’s message. The poem is a howl – though it isn’t without beauty: ‘hunting wild’ was a phrase I liked so much, I remember doodling it on my exercise books.

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

There are other poems by Owen that are perhaps better known – ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ among them – but this was the one that had spoken so clearly to me I have never forgotten it. The experience of a sheltered suburban schoolgirl was light years away from the troops mired in mud on the Western Front but, like all great poetry, it seemed to take me there. Poetry is personal. It has been a privilege and a joy to edit volumes of it, and I can heartily recommend compiling your own anthology of favourites – physically and, if you can, in memory.

Reading brings so many rewards. It can parachute us into other lives, and whisk us off to exotic – or even imaginary – places. It can arouse powerful emotions and readers develop empathy through experiencing, second-hand, what the writer has endured or enjoyed. Poetry, with its inventive use of language, feels even more intimate than prose. Committing poems to heart helps us to absorb this nourishment even more fully, as we add the poet’s words to our mental furniture. In a world in which there is still so much war, ‘Strange Meeting’ is as essential to the canon as it was a hundred years ago.

Poems To Mend a Broken Heart

in

So: to the marriage of true minds, impediments were admitted. Love was not love, and altered. Someone stopped counting the ways in which they loved. Love was once like a red, red rose – and now there’s been a freak heatwave, and everything has wilted. Fear not! Nobody knows heartache like poets. Here are words from wise women to soothe the pain of love lost.

 If it was an unrequited infatuation:

Remember that we all weave ourselves fantasies every day, and forgive yourself. The most mundane of commutes can be enlivened by falling in love twelve times on the way, with the sweep of someone’s hair or the kind crinkles round their eyes. Idle daydreams make the world a little lighter. Read Carol Ann Duffy’s joyful ‘Dear Norman’ – about how she recasts the newspaper boy as an intrepid pearl diver – and remember not to take your own invented love stories too seriously.

If you thought they were something they weren’t:

Seek out Edith Nesbit’s ‘Among His Books’ (yes, she of Five Children and It and The Railway Children fame). She knew about complicated affairs, since she had a tempestuous personal life with her husband Hubert Bland. They both had affairs and Hubert had children with other women, some of which Edith brought up as her own. This one’s also a great poem for jilted bookworms as the narrator takes comfort in his books,

‘For these alone, of all dear things in life

            Have I found true.’ 

Edith Nesbit

Edith Nesbit

If they thought you were something you weren’t:

Find solidarity in the words of two of the women associated with the racy Victorian Pre-Raphaelite artists – Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal. Christina was the sister of painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth was his model and muse and, later, his rather neglected wife. Despite producing hundreds of pictures of Elizabeth, Dante Gabriel frequently found his head turned by other inspirational women. Both poets wrote scathing verses about how he obsessively idealised Elizabeth while ignoring her actual talents and desires. In Christina’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’, the hundreds of images he created of Elizabeth show her ‘Not as she is, but as she fills his dream’.

In An Artist's Studio.jpg

Elizabeth’s own poem ‘The Lust of the Eyes’ is a clear-eyed condemnation of her husband’s worthless worship.

If they were unfaithful:

There is a wealth of wonderful poetry by women on this subject - if you’ve been cheated on, take heart in the fact that many of the world’s wittiest women have endured the same fate. ‘Dead Love’ by poor old Elizabeth Siddal is another indictment on Dante Gabriel’s wicked ways.

Elizabeth Siddal, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Elizabeth Siddal, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If you’re star-crossed:

Victorian poet Alice Maynell campaigned for an end to slavery and cruelty to animals, among other causes, had eight children, and still found time to write journalism and poetry. But evidently she knew the pain of love that must be denied. Her poem ‘Renouncement’ is both beautiful and heart-breaking and there’s comfort in knowing you’re not the first couple that – for whatever reason – can’t be together.

Renouncement

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—

The thought of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng

This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

If you were dumped:

The first professional woman writer, Aphra Behn, had clearly been the victim of a savage dumping in her time – see her poem ‘Love Armed’:

            ‘Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,

            Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed’.

It seems there were plenty of faithless lovers around in Victorian times, too, to judge from poems like Mary Webb’s wonderful ‘Why?’ which has a frankly agonising second and final verse – this is one for the wallowing days.

Why Mary Webb.jpg

It’s just over, ok?

And of course Dorothy Parker has something spikily brilliant to say about it. She always does. Two-Volume Novel is short enough to fit on the bathroom mirror, as is Yrsa Daley-Ward’s beautiful and blistering Heat. For something longer to wallow in, there are few better evocations of the dreariness and exhaustion of heartbreak than Hera Lindsay Bird’s ‘Watching six seasons of the Nanny while my long-term relationship slowly fell apart’ – find it in her excellent collection Pamper Me to Hell & Back.

Moving On

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop is gently heartbreaking but it does imagine acceptance. Nikita Gill’s gorgeous ‘Venus’ – hear her read it here – is one to learn by heart. The last word, though, has to go to Sara Teasdale.

‘Let it Be Forgotten’

            Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

            Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

            Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

            Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

            If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

            Long and long ago

            As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

            In a long forgotten snow.

Most of these poems appear in She is Fierce, now out in an unmissably orange paperback edition.

Please note that this website contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) when you buy through these links.

Five Forgotten Women Writers to Discover

in

In 2018, She is Fierce – an anthology of poems by women from the ancient world to the present day – was published. I had edited it to fill a gap on my own bookshelf because I couldn’t find an accessible volume that gathered diverse women’s voices from across the centuries. We were delighted when it found an appreciative audience and I was thrilled when my editor suggested there was room for more.

I suggested a theme of wanderlust, escape and freedom (and, ironically, finished the book during lockdown.) I’ve always found poetry an escape hatch from the everyday, and I had noticed that women seemed especially drawn to these themes. This was perhaps because in many periods and places their lives had been so constrained – from eighteenth century Bluestockings being reviled by critics for discussing literature to Victorian ladies cloistered in the home and their corsets, unable to step outside without chaperones. As well as including today’s brightest talents, in editing She Will Soar - now out in a stunning neon green paperback - I met a remarkable cast of writers from the past, many of whom were unfamiliar to me because they had been overlooked during their lifetimes or largely forgotten since. It’s been an education and a pleasure to discover their stories and include their biographies as well as their poems in the book, and here are a few of them I feel should be more widely known and read.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802 – 1838)

Letitia was better known as L.E.L., the enigmatic initials under which she published poetry in The Gentleman’s Magazine. They were eagerly awaited by readers, and writers including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti composed poems in her praise. Her much older editor fathered secret love children with her (she was forced to give them up), and since this was an open secret in Fleet Street, her bitter, almost exclusively male journalistic competitors saw to it that she was beset by rumours. Eventually Letitia married George Maclean and sailed with him to Ghana – then the Gold Coast – where he was governor. There she died of an overdose of Prussic Acid which was judged to have been accidental, despite some speculations to the contrary. L.E.L.’s romantic style fell out of fashion after her death, though her work has been rediscovered in recent decades. Lucasta Miller’s biography L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon comes highly recommended and I have a copy I’m looking forward to reading.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon.jpg

Anne Spencer (1882 - 1975)

Anne was a poet, teacher, librarian and civil rights activist and a key member of the Harlem Renaissance explosion of African-American culture. She was raised by her mother after her parents’ separation and, although she didn’t attend school until the age of eleven, she excelled in her education. Anne’s poetry addressed issues of racial and sexual inequality as well as expressing her deep love of nature, and her work was widely anthologised. She and her husband were active participants in the fight for civil rights and hosted figures including Martin Luther King Jr and Langston Hughes at their home in Lynchburg, now a museum.

Anne Spencer.jpg

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)

Mary was the great-great-niece of Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but was better known during her life for her eerie, imaginative novels. She was too shy to publish her poetry under the famous family name, so she did so under the pseudonym ‘Anodos’. Her poetry only reached a wide audience after her death when another poet, Henry Newbolt, published them under her real name. Mary never married and devoted most of her time to lecturing at the Working Women’s College in London.

I Had A Boat.jpg

Gabriela Mistral (1889 – 1957)

Born in a remote village in the Chilean Andes, Gabriela was determined to qualify as a teacher despite being barred from studying because of her political journalism. On succeeding, she taught all around Chile and, later, organised educational programmes in Mexico. Travelling widely, Gabriela spent her life writing and acting in defence of the downtrodden. She worked for the League of Nations in Paris and as a diplomat, always opposing fascism, in Spain and Italy during the turbulent 1930s. In 1945 she was the first Spanish American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although she is a central figure in Latin American poetry, her work was new to me.

Gabriela Mistral.jpg

Sarah Egerton (1668 – 1723)

As a teenager, Sarah published ‘The Female Advocate’ (1686), a stinging riposte to ‘Love Given O’er’ (1682) by Robert Gould which attacked the ‘pride, lust and inconstancy’ of women. Her horrified father banished her from London for this transgression, packing her off to relatives in the country. She was widowed young, and her second marriage – to a second cousin twenty years her senior, rather than Henry Pierce to whom many of her poems are dedicated – was scandalously stormy. The author Delariviere Manley attacked Sarah’s looks, called her a ‘She-Devil incarnate’ and claimed ‘she’s in love with all the handsome Fellows she sees’ – though it’s worth noting that he was far from unbiased since they had quarrelled viciously. Despite furious legal battles Sarah and her unhappy husband were not granted a divorce. Her work often raged passionately against women being denied freedom and education.

The Emulation.jpg

Coming in your ears

in

I’m SORRY it was juvenile (as well as dating me) to use that Phoenix Nights quote as a heading but I just couldn’t think of anything else once it had occurred to me. Anyway, I thought I’d put together some audiobook recommendations - here’s some of the fiction I’ve enjoyed listening to.

The Immortalists.jpg

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

This novel is brilliantly read by Maggie Hoffman. The four Gold children visit a fortune teller who can, apparently, predict the date of your death, and the book follows each of their stories in turn. The characters are utterly believable, flawed and loving and anxious and driven and mixed-up. The low-key tragedies of families drifting apart, disappointment and missed chances to connect are hauntingly written - I definitely had a tear in my eye a few times - but there is a humour and warmth and tenderness too. Brilliant writing, beautifully brought to life.

Maker of Swans.jpg

The Maker of Swans by Paraic O’Donnell

I LOVE Paraic’s writing and this book was brilliantly narrated by Mike Grady and Imogen Wilde. The fantastical elements of the story are utterly convincing and it’s stuffed with wonderful characters, deft touches of wry humour, intriguing mystery, tension and just absolutely delicious writing. So playful and enjoyable, it reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - an enormous compliment in my book. Imogen Wilde’s voice is just spellbinding and I’d like her to read me a bedtime story nightly, please.

Darling.jpg

Darling by Rachel Edwards

This was such a gripping listen. The central characters - Darling and her teenage stepdaughter Lola - are so compelling, so vividly and skilfully written. This is a novel with so much to say about Britain today, about prejudice, trauma, family and about love. It also boasts some brilliant flashes of humour - the schoolfriend’s mum who ‘over-Bodens’ had me snorting - and some spectacularly mouthwatering passages about cooking (someone give Rachel a food column please!) The narration by Jaimi Barbakoff and Adele Oni is absolutely pitch perfect.

Normal People.jpg

Normal People by Sally Rooney

She’s a damn wizard. I resisted this book at first - so hyped and it sounded a bit too like One Day to me (I know, I know, everyone but me loved One Day). I was an idiotic boob, because it’s a wonderful, achingly sharp book and a great audiobook - I loved Aoife McMahon’s narration. Connell and Marianne are 100% real to me and I’ll fight anyone who dares suggest they are actually fictional characters. I was so anxious about the television adaptation but in my view they absolutely nailed it. Ooooh I could watch that again, pretty much weekly.

The Memory Chamber.jpg

The Memory Chamber by Holly Cave

Thriller, love story, sci fi - this book has everything and I loved the narrator, Isobel, voiced by Imogen Church. She’s a heaven architect, designing artificial heavens for wealthy clients in a future that feels very plausible and close. It’s so thought-provoking: I kept speculating about the sights, sounds, smells and experiences that would be in my heaven, from roasted garlic through late summer evenings and mid-90s shoegazing indie to a warm cat purring on my lap and my kids giggling. It’s such an intriguing, brilliantly realised concept.

Daisy Jones.jpg

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The multiple narrators for this fictional ‘rockumentary’ meant it worked really well in audio - I felt I would have got mixed up between characters in the print edition but the ensemble cast brought them all to life so well. I loved this. The concept was so perfectly executed. Though I did feel it slightly flagged in the middle, the final chapters had me absolutely spellbound. Camila and Karen forever. If you liked this, look out for The Final Revival of Opal and Nev coming in 2021.

Please note that this website contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) when you buy through these links.

Hot reads for summer days

in ,

I LOVE hot weather. You’ll find me basking like a lizard at any opportunity I get, ideally with a gin and tonic and a book. This fantasy scenario happens a lot less frequently than I’d like, but in the event that you manage to secure yourself some summer reading time, here are some of my favourite hot weather reads.

The Tyranny of Lost Things.jpg

The Tyranny of Lost Things

I really enjoyed this book by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett set during a sultry London summer. It’s brilliantly atmospheric - she absolutely nails the sticky restlessness of a city summer in your twenties. Zadie Smith’s NW is also excellent at bringing summer in London to life.

Under the Volcano.jpg

Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry’s bonkers masterpiece is a surreal book about the final days of an alcoholic diplomat in Mexico and much more entertaining than that sounds. It’s stifling and mythic and many layered - I know, because I was fool enough to write my Masters dissertation on it. There’s a brilliant Backlisted podcast about it featuring poet Ian McMillan that is well worth listening to if you’re already a fan. One for a sweltering afternoon, perhaps with a glass of mezcal - though, given the infernal effects on Firmin, I’d stop at one.

Cape May.jpg

Cape May

I gobbled up Chip Cheek’s Cape May, which is comprised of a dash of Gatsby-flavoured glamour, a seasoning of sun and sea, a slosh of gin, a squeeze of sex, and a twist of sadness. Crisply written and completely transporting, it’s begging for an elegant veranda with a sea view on which to enjoy it, with a short dress and a long drink.

Ace of Bass

The opening poem in Fiona Benson’s absolutely excellent Vertigo & Ghost is the frenetically sticky ‘Ace of Bass’ (certainly the sound of a few of my formative summers). Hear Fiona read it here, and wonder whether anyone - even actual Ace of Bass - has ever captured the hormone-addled frenzy of schoolgirls in summer better.

The Girls.jpg

The Girls

Emma Cline’s scorching debut is a dark pleasure for a hot night. She evokes a gritty, strip-lit 60s with the nostalgic haze torn away. The Girls is scarily perceptive on girlhood, especially the need to belong and the dark places this can lead to.

Let’s hope we have a few more scorching days and warm evenings ahead of us. I’d love to know your top heatwave reads, and I might revisit this subject again as I have a few other sizzling suggestions that didn’t make this list.

Please note that this website contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) when you buy through these links.

I have been talking about poetry again...

in ,

Despite being stuck at home, my appetite for talking about poetry (or just talking to adults, full stop) is undimmed, so I’ve had to get my fix online! If you’re in the market for some poetry discussion, I talked to the wonderful Kate Halabura of Wandsworth Town Library. We had planned an event at the library in March but it was not to be, so it was lovely to chat with Kate via Zoom instead about She is Fierce and the hidden history of women’s poetry. You can see our chat below.

I also had the enormous pleasure of interviewing William Sieghart, author of the glorious Poetry Pharmacy books, for the Chiddingstone Literary Festival podcast. William is a poetry legend, and his books dispense thoughtful, perceptive advice on the perfect piece of poetry for whatever ails you - be it grief, loneliness or just not having enough pep for a party. You can listen to our conversation on the Chiddingstone Literary Festival website here. I’d love to interview more authors and poets so if you are looking for an event chair (online for the forseeable future, I guess) do get in touch.

Poetry Pharmacy.JPG

I’ve long been convinced that poetry is good for you (here’s me harping on about it some years ago in the Daily Express) and it’s an approach also taken by the marvellous Deborah Alma. As well as being an incredibly talented poet, Deb is the Emergency Poet, touring the country in a vintage ambulance with Nurse Verse, dispensing poems to ease your problems. Her anthologies The Emergency Poet and The Everyday Poet are two of my favourites, and she now runs a real life Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire. I hope to visit in *the time after* but, for now, you can order from them online and even book an email or telephone consultation.

Poetry Pharmacy shop.JPG

Please note that this website contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) when you buy through these links.