THE opening exercise of the workshop one rainy December evening is revealing.

"I want you to get out something that you always carry with you and tell me about it," poet Mahendra Solanki asks the group of teenagers and young people gathered around him.

Among the house keys and iPods, they cite inhalers and Medilink bracelets as the items that they, literally, couldn't live without.

"I've got my inhaler and a whole pharmacy in my bag," 18-year-old Aaron Sparks tells the group at the Monty Hind Youth Centre in Lenton.

"Everything I need to keep me ticking over."

Aaron, of The Meadows, has severe brittle asthma – a condition which means that he has frequent, severe asthma attacks and has had to spent time at the Queen's Medical Centre.

He is part of a group of a dozen young people from the hospital who have been taking part in the workshops with Mahendra, a Nottingham-based poet.

Aimed at teenagers and young people who have been at the QMC, the workshops started in October.

The youngsters have been working with local writers to write poems and short stories about their experiences.

The work will then be included in an anthology of their work, which will be published in April.

Mahendra reads out a piece of writing he worked on with Aaron in last week's session, to the group.

It begins: "I remember the first time I stopped breathing."

It goes on to recount Aaron's experiences of losing consciousness, looking down on himself sleeping, and waking up in a hospital bed. It is incredibly moving and an experience that Aaron finds difficult to express otherwise.

"It's a way of writing about my experience of being in hospital and what I have been through," said Aaron.

"If it is written down, it is not as emotional as when you speak about it."

Although Aaron has been out of hospital since starting new medication, his condition still impacts on his life.

"It affects me quite a lot. I'm unable to do the things I want to do," he said.

"I had been in hospital for a few months but because I am on a new treatment it makes me feel better. I'm often a bit ill at home but not ill enough to come into hospital."

But, he said, he enjoys coming to the workshops and meeting up with the friends he made in hospital.

"Mahendra is nice, and he's a good person who helps you a lot," he added.

"I'm really looking forward to the anthology, and the process of writing it."

Mahendra said he had been working on a range of exercises with the group, to get them to overcome their initial anxieties about writing and to help them gain confidence in their abilities.

This started with coming up with words and feelings and has progressed to producing group poems, and creating individual pieces of work.

He said: "Even using their possessions tells them that there are stories here.

"This is a group that felt they couldn't write a poem. Now they have produced them, you can see how much confidence it gives them.

"Aaron was quite stunned by what he produced. His mother can't talk about it without being upset. But writing it down means that it doesn't have to be referred to straight away, you can talk about it in a roundabout way."

Malendra sets another exercise for the group – to think of things you could do in a second.

Giggles erupt around the room as one shouts out "fart", and another screams "burp!"

But Mahendra immediately latches onto Hari Parekh's suggestion that you can "capture a moment." "Yes," he exclaims. "Brilliant!"

Hari, 17, of Bulwell, began volunteering at the hospital after battling depression and stress, as he wanted to help others in a similar situation. He said he finds coming to the sessions cathartic.

"It is quite nice to get things like your experiences down on paper," he said.

"There are a lot of young people here who have struggled through and battled things in childhood and have experiences that they can write about. Being able to write about it and put it into words is something that is nice to do."

He added that the sessions were "good fun, there's never a dull moment" and he enjoyed the group camaraderie.

"Everybody is supportive and empathetic.

"It is non-judgemental – you know you can tell your deepest, darkest secrets and it helps people to open up a lot more."

Dorro Hackett, a renal youth worker from the hospital, also attended the story-writing session.

"From the feedback, it seems to have been really positive to get down on paper what it has been difficult to say sometimes," she said.

"It's about young people meeting other people who have had other experiences and building friendships and relationships with each other."