Poetry Prescription: Joy

Deborah Alma is a UK poet and editor. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools. From 2012 she was the Emergency Poet offering poetry on prescription from her vintage ambulance. She co-founded the world’s first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire with her partner the poet James Sheard in 2019 and in June 2024 opened a second Poetry Pharmacy inside the Lush Spa on Oxford Street.

She is editor of Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology, #Me Too – rallying against sexual harassment- a women’s poetry anthology, Ten Poems of Happiness from Candlestick Press, The National Trust Book of Nature Poems and Poetry Projects to Make and Do, and co-edited with Dr Katie Amiel These Are the Hands-Poems from the Heart of the NHS. Her Poetry Prescription series is published by Macmillan.