Poetry Health Service
I CANNOT recommend highly enough The Poetry Health Service (PHS), a new, free service that prescribes contemporary poems as a tool for healing and connection which is now open online.
Users are prescribed a poem from an apothecary contributed to by writers from across the world following the completion of a colour-based flowchart exploring how they are feeling.
They are then invited to respond to their poem with a haiku of their own.
Part of the Homemakers project, the Poetry Health Service (PHS) is an Oldham Coliseum Theatre commission in partnership with HOME
Manchester, both good friends of AATA.
Founded by poet, playwright and performer Hafsah Aneela Bashir, PHS is a brand new, free creative service that prescribes contemporary poems as a tool for connection and healing.
PHS embodies and champions the importance of art in supporting our mental and emotional health.
It features poems contributed by writers from across the world including its founder Bashir (Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellow 2019/20), Roger Robinson (winner of the 2019 TS Eliot Prize), Theresa Lola, Anthony Anaxagorou, Keisha Thompson, Shagufta Iqbal, Salena Godden and USA-based poets
Roya Marsh, Buddy Wakefield and Aisha Sharif.
Users are prescribed a complimentary poem following the completion of a colour-based flowchart.
They are then invited to respond to their poetry panacea with a haiku of their own.
Bashir explained her relationship with poetry and the inspiration behind PHS: “When my 25-year marriage came to an end and I began another a chapter in a new home, with a different landscape, it was Derek Walcott’s ‘Love after Love’ that reminded me to meet myself again and to ‘feast’ on my life and who I have become.
“When my children wanted to venture out to a life beyond us as parents and discover new chapters of their own, it was Kahlil Gibran’s ‘On Children’ that gave me comfort and tamed the pangs of a mother’s heart letting ‘the bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness’.
“When I lost three very important people together in a short space of time, it was through poetry that I challenged my grief, writing a poem titled ‘To You’ from my collection The Celox And The Clot – a way to channel all the love that had nowhere to go.” »»The Poetry Health Service is open online at www.poetryhealth service.com and by texting POETRY to 07401 257351 (texts charged at your normal rate to a UK mobile).