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William has published many books and is a regular broadcaster. His most recent books are The Poetry Pharmacy, published Sept 2017 by Penguin, and 100 Prized Poems – 25 years of the Forward Books, published by Forward in association with Faber & Faber 2016.
The Poetry Pharmacy is exactly what it states in the title. This short read contains poems from a range of authors, all dealing with different subjects, such as bereavement, obsessive love, self image and self acceptance and various others. Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK, and there could be no better primer for reluctant poetry readers than William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy. Consider it the verse equivalent of Berthoud and Elderkin’s The Novel Cure: an accessible and inspirational guide that suggests the right piece at the right time to help heal a particular emotional condition.Poems of the Decade brings together more than one hundred poems from the many thousands submitted to the Forward Prizes for Poetry in the first decade of the 21st century. Following in the hallowed footsteps of Milton, who wrote in 1671 that “apt words have power to swage / The tumours of a troubled mind / And are as balm to festered wounds”, the poet Deborah Alma is preparing to open the UK’s first poetry pharmacy. Here, instead of sleeping pills and multivitamins, customers will be offered prescriptions of Derek Walcott and Elizabeth Bishop.
He also describes witnessing a road accident later in life, and finding relief in Philip Larkin’s 1961 poem Ambulances. “There I was with blood on my hands, trying to work out how to cope, and I remembered some lines from Ambulances, where you ‘sense the solving emptiness/That lies just under all we do,/And for a second get it whole,/So permanent and blank and true.’ And that was a brilliant explanation to me about just what was going on,” he says. Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization - I'm not the only one who feels like this. William, founder of both the Forward Prizes for Poetry and National Poetry Day, began prescribing poetry by accident. A perfect introduction for me into poetry. There are some I'd like to revisit and other works I'd like to see from different authors.Having finished this collection, it was a great pleasure to listen to the touching testimony of William Sieghart about the project and the power of poetry, in which his love for the Persian poet Hafez shines through. William is an entrepreneur, philanthropist writer and broadcaster with a distinguished record of support for the arts and literature. In 1992, he founded the Forward Prizes for Poetry and in 1994, National Poetry Day. Since September 2015, he has been chairman of the Board of Trustees at Somerset House.
This is turn led to her using poetry while working with survivors of domestic abuse and with people with dementia. This then inspired her to buy an ambulance, and become the Emergency Poet. There’s an exercise I do right at the beginning. I get the group to introduce themselves to each other by writing a couple of paragraphs – without using the letter E. The Poetry Pharmacy is one of the anthologies I'd like to get a physical copy of to leaf through regularly. I discovered new poets, the collection is diverse and I wrote down some poems that are now part of my favourites. I loved that the author linked health and poetry: words mean more than just assembled letters on paper or uttered out loud. They create something after they pass, after they are read, something that stays - I still remember "Come to the Edge" by Christopher Logue!Founder of the Forward Prize for Poetry and National Poetry Day, William Sieghart welcomes you into his Poetry Pharmacy where he serves up poetic prescriptions to soothe the soul.
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