Imagine feeling lonely or sad and finding comfort in a poem written by a stranger that connects with you. Suddenly you don’t feel so alone anymore.
That connection is the goal of the Southern Utah Poetry Pharmacy initiative by the Sigma Tau Delta chapter on Utah Tech University’s campus. The Poetry Pharmacy is a physical stand that the chapter sets up on campus and hands out poems to all those willing to stop.
The Sigma Tau Delta is the International English Honor Society. The chapter members work the booth of poems and sign up for shifts throughout the semester.
Dr. Ami Comeford, the adviser of Sigma Tau Delta, said the idea for the booth came about when she was doing research on the utilization of poetry in different healing and therapy techniques, both in terms of mental health and physical health.
“This growing field of humanities is the connection between humanities and medicine,” Comeford said. “A lot of the top medical schools now include humanities training for their future professionals.”
Comeford focused her research on a man named William Sieghart, who created a Poetry Pharmacy in Britain. Sieghart created a booth where people could come up to him, talk about their problems and share thoughts. In return, they would receive a poem to help with their struggles and provide some encouragement.
His concept was focused on how poems can help connect us all and diminish the feeling of loneliness when we are going through difficult situations. The booth he created had success with people waiting in line to speak with him and receive a poem.
Drawing inspiration from Sieghart, Comeford decided to bring the idea of a Poetry Pharmacy to Utah Tech.
Briley Wykoff, a former Utah Tech student and former vice president of Sigma Tau Delta, worked with Comeford in the creation of the booth in 2021.
Wykoff said when they were first thinking of starting the pharmacy, the idea was to set up folding tables. However, she didn’t feel like that was enough.
“I figured, if we were gonna do this, we should do it big,” Wykoff said.
Wykoff said with background experience in woodworking and some donated materials, she was able to construct the booth and have a fellow chapter member paint it.
Comeford said there are students who will visit the booth often to collect the poems, and sometimes they will get poems for other people they know who are struggling.
The booth has a menu that lists popular topics or struggles that a student may be dealing with, and the student can receive a poem specific to how they are feeling. They have poems for when a student is feeling heartbroken, lonely, self-conscious, inspired, humorous and more. This personalization provides students with a poem that they can relate to and reflect on.
Member of Sigma Tau Delta Shayne Nielson, a senior English major from St. George, said: “In my experience, poetry helps me process emotions a lot, like through breakups and stress and just sometimes happy times in my life. It has helped me…put words to what I am feeling and work through situations.”
The poems are curated by the chapter, drawing from poem collections and the internet. They also include collections of older poems, some as old as 84 B.C., and have a wide range of works by poets from all over the world.
Plans for the future of the pharmacy is expansion to the community. The pharmacy had its first “adventure” Sept. 26. Cafe Elevato hosts a poetry open microphone night every Tuesday, and they have allowed the chapter to set up the Poetry Pharmacy and give poems out to the people who come.
Eventually, the chapter wants the booth to become a pop-up pharmacy all over the community where they can positively impact others.
“Poetry is about connecting the human experience,” Comeford said. “We all experience things like grief and loss and sadness, but we also want to laugh together.”
The chapter is working toward making more people aware of the pharmacy and creating more traffic at the booth. Examples of their poems and a schedule of when and where the booth will be set up on campus can be found on the Poetry Pharmacy website.
