Tiredness crept in like a warm blanket
And suffocated me in sleep
My bones ached, my mind was tired
My will, my motivation, both weak.

Tom Bidwell's eyes are shadowed in grey and he is still skinny. But not as skinny as he used to be. He is up to seven stone. It's progress; a couple of years ago he was half a foot smaller and a stone heavier.

Tom, now 16, is recovering from cancer of the lymph glands. He has been through chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant, and he has popped more pills than most people will hope to see in a lifetime.

And alongside all the conventional medicines, he has discovered his own form of complementary therapy - writing. It would be an exaggeration to say that Tom has written his way back to good health, but his writing has certainly helped. There are poems of anger, poems of love and loss, poems of tears and fears, poems of entrapment.

I don't wanna die, Mum,
Don't wanna have to cry, Mum
Don't wanna ask why, Mum
But why?

I just feel so bad, Mum
It hurts to see you sad, Mum
Not strong enough to get mad, Mum
Not strong

We'll make it through the grey, Mum
Tomorrow's another day, Mum
I love you more than I can say, Mum
Love you

Tom's mum and dad meet me at Preston station. Jack is a big, brawny Lancastrian who you just know must have been a no-nonsense centre back in his day. Barbara is smart and petite, a dead ringer for Sheila Grant. They talk about Tom with pride and tenderness.

I get a strange deja vu when I meet Tom. When I was a child, I was also ill and watched the weeks in darkness turn into months, and the months turn into years. Like Tom, I had a serious illness (encephalitis), and like Tom, I turned to poetry. Both of us had a precocious sense of the darkness in life, and both of us ripped off the Beatles mercilessly.

When Tom first went to the doctor, aged 14, he was told he had a pulled muscle and that he should exercise more. "The next day I tried to shave my brother's head with a razor and the vibrations made me pass out." He went back to the doctor, who told him he had been standing on the streets for too long and had caught a cold. At which point Barbara called for a second opinion. Tom says it was January 5 1999 when he was diagnosed with cancer. You don't forget dates like that.

He shows off the contours of his illness. There are numerous scars, reminders of all those tubes and needles - lumbar punctures, biopsies, thoracotomies. Tom became bitter, resentful. He would ask a question to which there was no answer: what have I done to deserve such pain? Tom became estranged from his friends and lost his faith in God.

As well as his poetry he kept a diary. In February 1999 he wrote: "Woke up and thought of everyone at school. This made me cry. Mum came in and asked, 'Why are you crying?' and I gave five reasons. 1) Can't get comfy. 2) Going back for intense treatment soon. 3) I just want to be back to normal. 4) Why? 5) I smell. Mum said she could only solve number 5, so I had a bath. After my bath I smelled myself, realised I still smelled, and started crying again."

He says the writing has been liberating, but doesn't quite know how to put it into words. Not spoken ones, anyway. The poems are loaded with images of bars, of shadows of life lived in a bubble. In a way, he says, the best thing is that it has enabled people to understand something of what he has been feeling.

Some of the poems are very funny. I Am Bernadette, Can I Feel Your Testicles?, inspired by the Beatles song I Am the Walrus, is a tribute to a hospital nurse. Tom explains this was the way she introduced herself to him. "How to frighten someone in two sentences, hey?"

As with so many people, illness seems to have broken down his inhibitions. Tom has taken embarrassing, deeply personal experiences and somehow seen the funny side. Like when the doctors thought Tom's cancer may leave him impotent so they decided to store up some of his sperm for the future just in case. "They said to me, 'Now wash your hands and masturbate until you ejaculate into this little pot, and there's some pornography in the drawer. But you don't have to use it.' And this pornography is full of" - he looks as if he's about to be sick - "huge, big-breasted women. Awful, it was." He tsks with sly laughter.

At one point one of his poems was read out on Radio Lancashire and the disc jockey announced that unfortunately Tom had since died. Barbara says it is not the first time people have given up on him. A few months ago the family took Tom on holiday and the curtains were shut while they were away. "When we got back, a few neighbours came up and whispered their sympathies to me," says Barbara. Both Tom and Barbara are giggling away. They've got a black sense of humour, these Bidwells.

With the help of his mum, Tom has managed to get his poems published. What D'You Make Of It?, which has been on sale in the local Waterstone's in Preston, has so far raised almost £5,000 for the Cancer Research Campaign.

He shows me a story from the local paper. "Just a sob story, really," he says sheepishly. His mum reads out the headline: "'Brave lad!' Oh, I hate that!" I know what she means. As if Tom had any choice in being ill. One of his favourite poems is called Cos Cowards Get Cancer Too. He makes no apologies for stealing the title from John Diamond's book.

"The reporter said, 'Why do you want to do the book for charity?' and I said I didn't really, I wanted to keep some of it for me 'cos I'd written the poems. But mum made me." I said to the reporter, 'Are you going to put that in?' and he said, 'No, I don't think we will.'"

Tom's immune system is still suspect - he is recovering from a bout of shingles - but the cancer has cleared up. Despite the illness, he managed to take, and pass, five GCSEs. Now he has started at sixth-form college to do A-levels and is beginning to return to normality. But, he says, in many ways he feels a different person to the Tom Bidwell of old. More serious, more mature. He has recovered his optimism, sorted things out with God, and says he sometimes feels older than his years. Many of the things he used to be interested in seem trivial now. "When I go out with my friends they just talk about ... stuff. It doesn't mean anything to me. They just, like, get drunk. Everyone does that, but I'm not bothered."

The best thing about the poetry, he says, is not the writing, it's the response he has had from people. "It's amazing some of the letters I've got. The poems seem to have given people comfort. One woman wrote to me saying I had changed her life."

For a second, he looks so happy, so chuffed, but he quickly brings himself down to earth. "Do you want to see a poem I wrote about enemas? It didn't quite make it into the book."

To buy What D'You Make Of It?, send a cheque for £4 payable to Cancer Research Campaign c/o Barbara Bidwell, 57 Leyland Lane, Leyland, PR 5 3HA.