Deborah Alma is a UK poet, editor and bookseller. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools and lectured at both Worcester and Keele universities. From 2012 she was the Emergency Poet offering poetry on prescription from her vintage ambulance. She co-founded the world’s first walk-in Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire with her partner the poet James Sheard in 2019. In 2023 she opened a Poetry Pharmacy inside Lush on Oxford Street, and in March 2026 a third in York City Centre.
Her books include Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology, #Me Too – rallying against sexual harassment- a women’s poetry anthology, The National Trust Nature Poems and she co-edited, with Dr Katie Amiel, These Are the Hands-Poems from the Heart of the NHS and Poetry Projects to Make and Do published by Nine Arches Press. Her first full collection Dirty Laundry is also published by Nine Arches Press. She is co-author of The Poetry Business School with Mark Constantine & Kate Downey-Evans, 2025 from Harper Collins and edited the 8 book Poetry Prescription series with Macmillan in 2025, with another 4 due 2026.