My friends and other animals

It's a quarter to five on a chilly spring afternoon in the canteen of Springfield psychiatric hospital, Wandsworth. Between 30 and 40 people - hospital users, professionals, even one or two members of the catering staff - have gathered in the canteen for the first poetry session: a reading of my own poetry and, at the suggestion of Jeremy - the senior social worker who came up with the idea of my doing a poetry reading and some follow-up workshops here in the first place - a few poems by other people too. Which poems, though?

"How about Wordsworth's 'Daffodils'?" he'd said over a sluggish tuna bake in that same canteen a few weeks before. "In order not to frighten them away?" I'd wondered. Shouldn't I have more confidence in my audience and in modern poetry than that? But maybe Jeremy was right. He did know these people, after all. Then again, he also seemed to be one of life's natural worriers...

"What's the matter?" I asked him as we stood around in the canteen waiting for a PA system to arrive so that things could begin. I didn't think we needed one, but Calum and his friend, who do voluntary work around the local hospitals setting patients' poems to music, have got wind of the reading and decided they'd like to do a stint too. And their kind of poetry needs a PA system.

Later, a couple of other people say they'd like to read a poem too. Jeremy gets a tiny bit testy about yet another poet wanting to have his say, so he asks the mild-mannered man clutching a few precious-seeming manuscript pages to his chest ("I used to work as a nurse here," he tells me confidingly) how long he anticipates his contribution will last. "Mohammed Ali: 15 seconds; Langston Hughes: 30 seconds; my own poem - translated from the Urdu into English, of course - 15 seconds."

I'm still wondering how I could have forgotten Mohammed Ali's bit-career as an inspirational poet, when Jeremy turns back to me, visibly relieved. "I'm pleased you've brought your poetry books along," he sighs, fanning them out prettily across the table. "It makes the whole thing look that much more professional."

Then, all of a sudden, the PA system turns up, and we're off.

Two items into my first set, I'm bang in the middle of a poem of mine about genocide in Rwanda as seen through the eyes of a small, fearful girl, when a rather fearsome-looking guy right at the back, with close- cropped hair and fag between his lips, shoots his hand up as if I'm the teacher and he's back behind his desk at primary school. When I finish the poem, I ask him what he wanted.

"Could you tell me, mate, how you wash the stains of sin away?" he says, poker-faced. The poem I've just read contains a line about the little girl rubbing and scrubbing at clothes above a flaming fire. "Well... according to Christian belief," I improvise desperately, "it's Christ who washes the stains of sin away. But, if you want my personal opinion, I'm afraid that I don't know any easy answer to that question."

Does that really pass for a sensible reply? Whether it does or not, he doesn't ask me anything else. But a couple of poems later on, he and his friend, who's been grinning at me throughout like some manically playful demon, suddenly get up and go. I mention it to Jeremy at half-time. "I think they thought they'd dropped into a religious service," he supposes, "on account of your collarless shirt..."

Four days later, I'm back at Springfield, standing rather nervously in the doorway of a small and friendly-looking library - which, to my amazement, seems to be full of people talking very loudly to each other about the poetry workshops. Encouraged, I go off in search of the photocopier.

Fifteen minutes later, armed with 10 copies each of poems about a moth, a cabbage-white butterfly and a spider (all by Elizabeth Jennings), and a humorous throwaway by Roger McGough about the imaginary allivator (an animal that's a cross between an alligator and an elevator, with an illustration to prove it), I'm walking slowly back up to the library when I have a sudden panic attack. What am I doing offering these distressed adults poems about moths and butterflies? Isn't it all too ridiculously effete? Shouldn't I have chosen things that tried to engage with the real world? Their world?

When I reach the library again, all the noisy people seem to have disappeared...

There are eight of us sat around two low tables in one corner of the library - six users, myself, and Derek, an occupational therapist who also writes poetry and has offered to use one of the hospital's computers to produce a small publication of the poems that we'll all be creating and discussing together over the next few weeks. By the end of the sessions, we even have a name for the collection: Spring Flowers.

Having read the photocopied poems aloud, I ask everyone to think of an animal that they feel especially strongly about. What is it that they admire about it? What is it that they fear?

Penny, who has a powerful, intensely vulnerable stare, chooses snakes - not any particular snake, but simply the "revolting" idea of snakes. So what is it exactly that frightens and repels her? "The way they move, the way you never know what direction they're going to be moving in. They turn back upon themselves all of a sudden and travel in totally unexpected directions..." Quite the opposite of the way in which humans usually act, I suggest.

Malcolm chooses a kingfisher, describing in loving detail its extraordinary patience as it waits for its prey. His eyes shine with the excitement of remembering it all...

But what exactly is he remembering? "Some wildlife programme on TV," he says. But he seems too engaged for it to be a second-hand experience mediated by a screen. Then, all of a sudden, he tells us about his Barbadian childhood, and the children's rhyme about the kingfisher...

I'd asked them all to jot down words, phrases, that would put flesh on the bones of their feelings and ideas. Malcolm's are already shockingly, thrillingly strong and evocative. There's definitely poetry in the making here.

Next week, Malcolm doesn't turn up, nor the week after that. Four weeks into the sessions, he arrives with his poem. And what of Penny's snake? "Did you write the poem about the snake," I ask her next time. "No," she says, "but I wrote one about a crow."