Take a walk through the countryside. Oswestry is surrounded by beautiful countryside, perfect for a leisurely autumn stroll. Be sure to visit Old Oswestry hillfort for stunning views over Shropshire and into Wales. After a day of exploring, you can return to your cosy accommodation and relax in front of the fire. Or, if you`re feeling more adventurous, you can head out to one of the many pubs and restaurants in Shropshire to enjoy a delicious meal and a drink. Imagine if everything this poem claimed were true. If we measured our lives by our hearts’ throbs – by our excitements, our longings and our pangs of misery – just think how differently we’d do things. We’d take risks for the sake of taking them, and fall in love for the thrill of it. We’d sacrifice ourselves for others with ease and grace, because in doing so we’d also be enriching ourselves. In her forties, while recovering from an abusive relationship, she went to university to study creative writing, expressing her pain in poems that were eventually published in a collection, Dirty Laundry.

The brief answer is that I did a degree in creative writing in my forties, then did an MA a few years ago. I’ve had a poetry collection published, Dirty Laundry, which was me writing through a difficult – well, an abusive – relationship. And I worked with people with dementia for a few years, using poetry to assist communication. That’s how I ended up doing Emergency Poet: a combination of all of those things. And bloody-mindedness. Then all the small securities you built about your house, your desk, your calendar are blown like straws; and momentarily, as if a scent of ivy or the earth had opened up a childhood door, you pause, They’re delighted. It was a shop at the top of the high street that had been closed down for 13 years, and it had become almost like an emblem of this little place with its shut-down shops. We have events here every weekend, and there’s a little coffee shop. It’s comfortable. People can sit and read and talk to each other, without feeling rushed. And they’ve been really supportive. We even have couple of volunteers who are helping out, because they want it to succeed. So why poetry, for you? There’s a skill to creating spaces where people feel really comfortable, and it’s one Alma seems to possess in abundance. You see photographs of her shop and you just want to be in there, reading a good book in the cosy café while sipping a nice cup of Tea (S Eliot) along with a piece of Philip Parkin cake.Fittingly, a doctor friend recommended The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Mind, Heart and Soul to me. I read most of it while too exhausted and headache-y to concentrate on a novel or look at a screen. Sieghart has collected poems (or short extracts of poems) and sorted them by what ills of the soul they might soothe. While feeling OK, I found the brevity of some poems unsatisfying. While feeling ill, however, this was advantageous. It is definitely a good book to read when you feel under the weather. Sieghart's commentary on each poem is thoughtful and well-judged, balancing sympathy, empathy, and pragmatism deftly. The poem speaks tenderly of love between men and women, men and men, and women and women. At the time there were a lot of tears and much hugging, and the man is now in a relationship. 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.

What intrigues me about Philip James Bailey’s wonderful poem We Live in Deeds is its call to action. There’s something intensely motivating about the idea that we might fit a whole life’s worth of living into an hour, if only we had the courage. So often we are paralysed by our fears, concerns, worries and ‘what-ifs’, and we forget to dread the ‘what-if-I-don’ts’ instead. 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.I didn't choose them to illustrate my criticisms, but these two poems are placed in different Divisions: Collins in Self-Image and Self-Acceptance, Doty in Motivations. Note the conditions. I think there’s a need in all of us to express ourselves, connect intimately in a spiritual, philosophical or thoughtful way with your own life or with the world. And words are the way I found to do that. Tell me about your consultations. Very few people feel really heardthese days. It seems that’s the great gift you’re giving.