Happiness FM

Mary wrote her first poem when she was four but it took her another fifty-six years to start sharing her work at poetry events, street parties and slams. She has been on television and radio as part of the Nationwide Building Society poetry ad campaign and has dished up poems all over the country as part of the Poetry Takeaway team. In 2017 she set up the “Poems not Pills” project to promote the therapeutic value of poetry for health professionals and their patients. Her debut pamphlet Happiness FM was published in 2020 and was selected as one of 10 uplifting books chosen by the NHS. Her poems have been published in a number of anthologies, websites and zines. In April 2022 Mary was featured in The Guardian regarding her experience of coming to performance poetry later in life.

'Happiness FM' will take you on an exhilarating ride, travelling at breakneck speed from the everyday to the transcendental and back again. But as you read between the layers of laughs, jaunty rhythms and irresistible rhymes, you'll discover an understated pathos and a highly politicised mind at work. These poems will sing in your mind long after you've closed the pages of this determined, honest and uplifting collection.' - Jacqueline Saphra; 'Mary Dickins debut collection Happiness FM hugs you like a warm cup of cocoa. Full of wit and charm her poetry will make you chuckle and joyfully reflect on how beautifully odd this world can be.' - Peter Hayhoe (Muddy Feet Poetry)