"Hair Pharmacy" in "Sharjah Book" Poems offer therapeutic doses of healing through the word
Sharjah, 13th November / WAM / Crowds of visitors to the Sharjah International Book Fair stopped in a pavilion filled with light and amazement before an idea they were not accustomed to before: the “Poetry Pharmacy.” Here, chemical medications are not dispensed, but rather poems are presented in the form of therapeutic doses that express various human conditions and call for healing in meaning, beauty, and words.
Behind this idea stands the English poet and paramedic Deborah Alma, who was known in Britain as the “Ambulatory Poet” after she spent many years in emergency departments treating patients and the elderly before she discovered that poetry, in turn, is capable of healing the wounds of not only the body but also the heart and memory.
She launched her mobile humanitarian project in 2011, where she traveled around British cities, festivals, schools, and libraries, carrying with her poems placed in vials resembling medicine boxes and presenting them to anyone who needed “word therapy” according to their mood or psychological state. Today, more than a decade after this experience, Deborah stands in Sharjah as part of the activities of the 44th session of the exhibition to participate with a wide Arab audience who also believes in the power of literature to heal the soul.
Visitors open the boxes and find inside them carefully selected poems from different eras and languages, ranging from wisdom, love and self-inspiration. Some laugh in amazement and others take pictures as if they were documenting a symbolic moment of healing.
At its core, the “Poetry Pharmacy” experience carries a deep human vision: that literature is not an intellectual luxury, but rather an existential need in a time full of noise, as Deborah presents a simple and inspiring model of what a poem can do when it comes out of the books to sit next to the sick, the tired, or the one searching for a new meaning in life.
At the Sharjah International Book Fair, this idea seemed completely in its natural place, where the word meets man, the book meets therapy, and imagination meets the most beautiful human act.
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