The weather hasn’t been great, my plan to hit the gym more regularly this year has taken a back seat and my finances are about as dicey as the latest EastEnders plotline. And it has all affected my mood. Big time.
With meditation out of the question, I think it’s time for some medication. But what should I be prescribed as I look at the myriad options on display at the pharmacy?
In the end, I opt for something unconventional, unexpected and unlike anything I had witnessed before. I reach out for a tiny bottle labelled “Happy Pills”. But these are not just your ordinary pills. They’re capsules filled with tiny scrolls of poetry. And very good ones, too.
I am at Oxford Street inside the Poetry Pharmacy, a colourful bookshop and cafe which went viral on TikTok last year since it opened inside Lush’s flagship store. Unlike your standard bookshop – or pharmacy, for that matter – it sells poems in Book form, all arranged by different moods from “first aid”, “calm”, “becoming” and “words for life”.
But the real draw – and the reason for its social media fame – is the wooden cabinet of poetry pills it dispenses in tiny glass bottles, sold either in small or large. The aforementioned “Happy Pills” I tried out are just one of many bottles filled with capsule poems to suit every mood.
Maya Rowland, the shop’s manager, walked me through the collections of “medicines” on display. Given January is often a miserable month for many people, she was quick to find the appropriate remedy.
“Right now we’ve got SAD, which is Seasonal Affective Disorder,” she told me after I saw a bottle of pills marked SAD. “So, because it’s kind of cold and grey, people kind of feel a bit low this time of year. That’s a nice one, but we’re always thinking of new ideas for pills.”
Maya, an avid reader, has been running the Oxford Street branch since it opened last summer. It’s the second branch in the UK – the original Poetry Pharmacy is based in the Shropshire market town of Bishop’s Castle, a 13-minute drive from the Welsh border.
The success of that branch caught the attention of Mark Constantine, the co-founder of Lush, who let the pharmacy create a pop-up store in the cosmetic firm’s Soho branch in November 2023. The trial run was such a hit that Lush let the Poetry Pharmacy set up a permanent base in their flagship Oxford Street store the following June.
“We’ve only been open seven months, but they have been crazy busy. This is the first time we’ve been quiet ever,” Maya explained, describing the post-Christmas calm.
While we speak, I quickly turn to a bottle of pills marked “Social Media Detox”. Very tempting, but I tell myself the happy pills will suffice.
For anyone wanting some little pills to spice up their love lives on Valentine’s Day, Maya had a few suggestions: “We’ve got the ‘Love Pills’, which are very romantic. And we’ve got a new bottle called’ Shakespeare & Love’.”
I try out the “Shakespeare & Love” pills – and even have a prescription written by one of the store’s workers. True to form, the pills include lines from the Bard’s plays and sonnets. And yes, it includes that line from Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
So, if you need a dose of rhyming couplets, iambic pentameters or haikus to beat the January blues, the Poetry Pharmacy is the best place to get your fix.
The Poetry Pharmacy is inside Lush, 175-179 Oxford Street, London W1D 2JS. Opening times Mon-Sat 10am-9pm, Sun 12pm-6pm.
