It is Jo’s turn to speak: so she stands and spills her guts before the hushed assembly. In emotional waves, the young woman unpeels her innermost traumas — a friend’s tragic death, the break-up of a relationship and being sick with intense feelings of love. But this isn’t group therapy. It’s a newly emerging form of entertainment: stand-up sharing.

Welcome to the fast-growing world of spoken-word open mikes. The events, held in clubs and the back rooms of pubs in major British cities, began as contests of poetic skill or creative writing. But they have developed a far deeper dimension because they offer two of the rarest commodities in busy young city-dwellers’ lives: silence and people who will listen for five minutes. Often there’s a whole room-full hankering to hear these modern-day confessors.

Jo Tedds and I are sitting in the back room of the Oh! Bar in Camden, North London. A small red-curtained stage frames us. Chairs are scraped around in readiness for the weekly Thursday evening show. Jo works as a college library assistant, not usually an occupation known for public outbusts. But, like many young people, she had written down her private griefs and traumas. When she shared them with her friends, they persuaded her to expose them to a wider audience. “My most recent performance was after a grim winter,” says the 24-year-old, who performs under the nom de stand-up: Gipsy Girl. “The pieces were titled Good Grief.”

The pieces cover her friend Leigh’s death from an accidental overdose. He was the first person she had lost who was close to her, and she felt terrible guilt and distress. Soon after, she broke up with her boyfriend of two years. Yet she remains philosophical and her final performance lines are always optimistic.

“I find it therapeutic to talk. I think speaking out at open mikes should be encouraged,” says Jo. She performs at other London events, where spoken word is mixed with live music and DJs.

Up to 30 fellow performers sign up each Thursday at the Oh! Bar and share their inner secrets with 50 or more listeners sitting packed in neat rows. The seem sympathetic to the performer. If it weren’t for all the drinking and smoking, you might think they were in a 12-step-programme. Niall O’Sullivan hosts the evening, which he developed over the past three years. O’Sullivan, 32, also teaches writing workshops and is a regular-looking guy with an easy demeanour.

“What people get high on when they hear confessional poetry is that the writer is taking something difficult and presenting it in a beautiful way,” he says. “If you read out something deep and dark, people in the audience feel stronger for hearing someone else talk about it. It’s nice to not feel like such a freak, like you’re not the only one,” he says.

Guy J Jackson, a frequent performer who is a broad-shouldered, bearded man in Woody Allen glasses, agrees: “If you have a problem, you can share it. Even with a literary sugar-coat-ing, it has a bit of the AA-meeting philosophy.” Jackson is a film-maker by day, and nocturnal teller of his bittersweet life story. Many of the performers’ accounts are themselves the stuff of arthouse film plots: sex and breakups are common ground, but there are also tales about drugs, prostitutes and internet dating, confessions of hatred, love or carelessness.

Jackson hopes by telling his story he can help others. “I got this pain-in-the-ass obsessive-com-pulsive disorder where I check the door locks close to a hundred times before I leave my apartment. It makes me late for everything, and it makes me think I’m a madman. In my stories I purge my failing a little and help myself be better, plus I might be helping someone else out there with OCD.” His father died five years ago after a long illness. The experience is a kernel of many of his stories. Jackson gets up on the little wooden stage to tell a story; and, as he sits back down to warm applause, he turns to me and says: “I’m just writing about what a big fat human I am. We’re all human together.”

Shared humanity isn’t only the stuff of bittersweet humour, though. Racism and time spent in psychiatric hospitals are at the heart of Naomi’s most personal poems.

“I feel I have something valid that should be shared. I would find keeping my poetry in a diary a bit like holding my breath.” she says. Naomi was found to have bipolar disorder after she was discovered wandering confused and barefoot near Buckingham Palace at 3am. “Sometimes I get episodes when I think I am the next queen of England,” Naomi explains. “I take prescription drugs for it, but there’s not a lot anyone can do.” She finds reading her story aloud cathartic.

Every day there is a different survey reporting on how people live, but we know nothing of the person we bump knees with on the train. The curiosity that leads listeners to an open mike is surely healthier than our addiction to soaps. It’s a curiosity that can take you to some dark places. Donall has wild hair and an infectious laugh. He works as a special-needs teacher in Tottenham, North London, and started performing to recover from severe facial paralysis after an accident that made talking painful and difficult. He reads a poem about the death of his unborn child.

“Early in my wife’s pregnancy we lost the baby, it happened at home and there was blood everywhere. My wife said, ‘Don’t flush my baby away!’ I didn’t know what to do, so I buried the foetus beneath a rose bush in our local park. You just can’t be prepared for something like that,” he says. Of his poem he says: “It was my solution. There had to be somewhere where I could lay down the pain. There are people out there grateful to have this grief articulated for them, for helping them to understand, or just be aware. It is healing for them and for me.”

Fancy a go? Check out these stand-up venues

LONDON

Open mikes Spoken Word Cabaret, Oh! Bar, Camden High Street: every first and third Monday (myspace.com/spokencabaret) Touch Me I’m Sick, Old Crown Pub, New Oxford Street: third Wednesday of the month
Shows Shortfuse, Camden Head, Camden Walk: every Thursday (20six.co.uk/shortfuse) Lazy Gramophone, The MacBeth, Hoxton Street and The Luminaire, Kilburn High Road: monthly (lazygramophone.com)

OUTSIDE LONDON

Open mikes

Edinburgh Big Word Performance Poetry, The Tron Bar, Royal Mile: fortnightly.
Cardiff Last Thursday, The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea: last Thursday of the month
Oxford Poet Yourself, Borders Books, Magdalen Street: third Monday of the month

Times recommends

• Ask me about sex, not pay
• Culture clubbing
• Honor Blackman: Words from the wise