When the post includes a Wall Street business card with scribbled on the rear "Thanks for the poems at the Doctors" clipped to a £20 note, and a more plaintive letter "I have just picked up a copy of Poems in the Waiting Room, and I thought what a great thing. Full of thoughts of self and sorrowful me, it plucked me out of my doom and filled me with a moment of beauty. Whosoever you are, thank you; great idea!", you know that Poems in the Waiting Room (Registered Charity 1099033) happily meets a waiting patient's need.

In Every Waiting Room

Poetry intimately and swiftly links the mind and the heart, and poems, drawn from the springs of well-being, stimulate similar emotion. A grateful patient wrote "Thank you for your wonderful poems. I had to drag my daughters back to the doc's for the umpteenth time (they should give me keys) but, sitting with my toddler careening round the waiting room and my six month old grizzling, what a pleasure it was to fall upon your poems. How lovely it was to become absorbed, momentarily, into their beautiful rhymes and imagery. A moment's respite from the world of worry, guilt and tantrums. Thank you, I am most grateful."Poems in the Waiting Room therefore helps particularly in creating and sustaining the healing environment.

You can become part of securing this through joining the Friends of PitWR. A donation of just £25 will help to supply one NHS Surgery with a quarterly supply of our poems for one year.

PitWR has concentrated efforts on NHS general practice. This often neglected sector provides particular advantage for all art in health projects. First, the individual units are small scale. There is therefore a direct involvement of practice staff in the activity. The enthusiasm of staff in promoting the poetry cards to their patients is a key to success. Next, general practice deals with the public as part of their daily routine, and who are not in some way isolated by their morbidity. Benefits flow directly into the community. Further, general practice is diffused in every community sector and so penetrates hard pressed problems areas that art activities rarely touch. PitWR has achieved a strong appeal across a wide spectrum of social and economic diversity. The poetry cards are taken away as frequently by patients in the high-rise concrete wilderness as in the leafy suburb. PitWR reaches parts other arts cannot touch.Nation-wide

We have at present a mailing list of some one thousand five hundred NHS waiting room nation wide. PitWR is the most extensive arts in health programme in the NHS, and was described in a House of Lords debate as the most widely read national poetry publication. To date close to a million poetry cards have been distributed and largely taken away and kept by patients. In this way, PitWR acts as an exceptional shop window for contemporary poets and their work.

Charity Donations

There are innumerable worthy charities seeking your support to solve problems throughout the world. But a donation to Poems in the Waiting Room is quite different. The charity is small and so every donation has a high proportionate impact. Further, while donating to world wide worthy causes is admirable, there is little to show the effect you may have had. But with Poems in the Waiting Room you can see the result of your donation immediately by visiting you local surgery supplied with our poetry cards, and even note a patient reading one.

Apart from your contribution to arts in health as a Friend of PitWR, you will receive other benefits. The Welcome Pack contains a copy of our Collected Edition. covering 1998 to 2010. We will also directly mail to you a copy of the quarterly poetry card, together with an informative quarterly Friends Newsletter to increase involvement in PitWR through the story of our poets, arts in health especially in primary care and the broad run of poetry news and events.

Interest from PitWR Friends for direct help with the charity is welcomed.

It is hoped that the Friends will reflect its range of social diversity. PitWR is popular and well received across the range of social diversity, from the leafy suburbs to the concrete wilderness. For this reason, there is no fixed Friends subscription, since all are welcome. Some poems are long and some are short, but all are important. It is the same with donations the suggested range is from at least £25 to £100 or more, contributions from sonnet to epic scale. A sum of some £25 has tended to become standard.Plans.

The Friends of PitWR are an essential part of the future of PitWR arts in health charity. It has proved problematic for a variety of reasons to secure funds from conventional public and private sector sources. Direct involvement of Friends of PitWR is the key to ensuring the future of this arts in health charity. We serve at present some one thousand five hundred NHS waiting room nation wide. We plan to use new funds to raise this total to some two thousand and possibly increase the number of editions each year from four currently to six. The quarterly batch of twenty poetry cards is rapidly exhausted.

Join Us

Contributions are welcome by post. All that is needed is a note of the Friend's name and full postal address sent with a donation, (cheque payable to Poems in the Waiting Room) to Helen Lee Friends of PitWR 12 Abingdon Court Lane CRICKLADE SN6 6BL. You can join by email at helenium@care4free.net, sending the donation later. It is helpful to state of the donation is gift aided so that tax may be reclaimed, where the donation is less than tax paid by a taxpayer. Forms are available for standing orders if this form of regular payment preferred.

An enthusiastic and grateful reader from Ealing wrote to Poems in the Waiting Room. "What a really lovely idea! Thank you very much for lighting up our doctor's surgery waiting room. The day's weather was awful! The atmosphere in the waiting room none too healthy. But your poems are all wonderful - and meaningful. Well done and thanks......"

Helen Lee Administrator Friends of PitWR

12 Abingdon Court Lane CRICKLADE SN6 6Bl helenium@care4free.net