Poetry on Prescription on tour

Poetry came firmly off the bookshelf -- with a mission to uplift and inspire -- when William Sieghart, National Poetry Day founder brought Poetry on Prescription to St John’s Wood Library, Westminster on 18 June.

William, who also founded the Forward prizes for poetry, firmly believes in poetry’s ability to see readers through the most difficult moments of life, by providing a sense of complicity and understanding. The idea of Poetry on Prescription was born at the Port Eliot festival in 2012, where William found people queuing round the block asking him to suggest poems to cure everything from a blue day to a broken heart.

William was at St John’s Wood Library as part of a mini-series of special library events which national charity The Reading Agency brokered with publishers Faber and Faber.

His Faber-published poetry anthology, Winning Words: Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life – poems ancient and modern especially chosen to inspire and help the reader through the tribulations of daily existence – was central to his library events, during which he explained to readers why poetry can be better than therapy; read from his anthology and then prescribed a poem for any problem that was presented to him, after attendees invited to book ‘appointments’.

“In our increasingly alienated modern lives, an appropriate poem can be more helpful than many forms of therapy. We love our poetry but are often intimidated by it. Yet we consume more greetings cards than any other nation, enjoy our chants on the football terraces and have contributed significantly to the canon of rap music,” says William Sieghart.

“What a wonderful way to bring poetry alive! It’s extraordinary how poetry can challenge and soothe us, help us learn, laugh and talk to each other. Its life-changing power will endure, and I’m so proud that The Reading Agency is working alongside libraries to widen that access and ensure more people benefit from William’s poetry surgeries,” says Sandeep Mahal, who leads The Reading Agency’s work with publishers and libraries to create successful and exciting events and activities for readers.