Poetry on Prescription?

Poetry has been an important element of this project, and our weekly poetry sessions with local poet Nige Wood have been popular and introduced another creative way to share our experiences, articulate our feelings and explore language around sound, noise, distraction, quiet, tranquility, space and much more (please see our poetry section to read some of the poems the group has produced).

William Sieghart published a book last year: The Poetry Pharmacy which is a collection of poems prescribed to people in need by Sieghart, each poem addresses specific conditions including: fear of the unknown, unrequited love, stagnation, purposelessness, convalescence, oppression, and on the Today program this morning he read a poem for people unable to sleep, keep awake by worries and concerns you can listen to a recording of the poem by Wendell Berry here.

William Sieghart and Jeanette Wintersons are taking part in an Intelligence Squared event called The Power of Poetry on Friday 2nd March for anyone in London.

"Together they (Sieghart and Winterson) will explore poetry’s uncanny ability to calm, console and, above all, connect us to the minds and feelings of others. Finding the right poem at the right moment is not just a problem shared, Sieghart says, but a problem transformed. It is ‘to discover a powerful sense of complicity, and that precious realisation: I’m not the only one who feels like this.’ It is to forge a connection with ‘this stranger who understands – and what results is a sort of peace.’"