Words and wonder: using poetry as part of the patient experience

A series of Mondays in 2025 saw me carry a box of creative writing prompts, balanced like a baby on my hip, and push one palm against hospital double doors leading to an oncology and haematology day unit, while thinking—how am I going to do this? How am I going to step into this space—a space that continually manages illness, treatment, dignity, fear, privacy—and be welcomed, be beneficial, be a poet? Once through those doors, and after tentatively approaching a patient, I set down my cargo of brightly coloured notebooks, laminated poems, photographs of autumn leaves, speckled feather in wipe-clean, see-through plastic sleeve, a conker, shells—and began to talk. Because it turns out what I needed to be most of all on those Mondays, was the person who likes talking with strangers, who likes sharing stories, who likes making meaningful connections through language.