It's a mild March evening, and I'm waiting on the harbourside, next to the fountain which cascades down the steps.

Normally, I'd be waiting for one of the blue-and-yellow "waterbuses" that the Bristol Ferry Boat Company runs for commuters.

But tonight, I'm catching The Word Boat: an evening of live prose and poetry on a floating venue.

As the words unfold from six performers, we'll be touring Bristol's historic harbour, from Hotwells to Temple Meads.

Stepping onto the Elizabeth is a step backwards in time.

This is not one of the usual Bristol Ferry boats: this Edwardian vessel is smaller, more intimate, with large windows to prevent the dark wood interior from being claustrophobic.

The performances were for charity

Updated with a bar, a PA system, and even a flushing toilet, she is the perfect setting for some traditional entertainment.

Dan, the skipper, gives us a safety announcement, and the reassurance that the Elizabeth has just had the maritime equivalent of a full service, so "all the holes should've been filled in." and we set off.

It's dusk as we set off past the Watershed and head out under Pero's Bridge into the harbour.

Nicola Padden, a crew member on the ferries and a writer herself, is the force behind The Word Boat. She is also our MC.

She explains that the artists are performing for free: every penny will go to CLIC, a charity for children with cancer or leukemia.

First up is Julian Ramsey-Wade. A long-time poet, he starts with a piece which is half-poetry, half-history lesson, written for Bristol's European City of Culture bid.

'Lampoonerate'

Following on with an unashamedly adoring love poem, and a reading of a piece by Jean Hathaway, Julian moves into the realm of current affairs.

He drops into a US accent for a poem in the style of a presidential address.

Though the President is never named, the target is clear, as the poem's lapses of language "uniquify" and "lampoonerate" a leader who promises to crush anyone with "weapons of mass destructionalism."

Lucy Hudson is next. She opens with "The 60-Minute Man", a poetic portrait of a secret shared between a teenage girl and the eponymous photo developer.

Later, she lightens up for "The Toast Bandit", in which a household superhero wields a vacuum cleaner, "devouring small-minded crumbs," and generally bringing peace and happiness to the domicile.

She finishes with the thought-provoking "The De-Junk Queen": a clear-out of old junk turns into a pathological purge of possessions, relationships and body parts.

Following a musical intermission, the next reader reads his story "Lost", a surreal exploration of madness, in which the apparently placid Mabel meets a deranged man who stands on a bus shelter, claiming to be The Chosen One, wearing a traffic cone and railing against passers-by.

"Lost" is peppered with local references: when they board a bus, The Chosen One asks for Hades and Mabel opts for Longwell Green.

Pizza box symbolism

As the tale unfolds, an insightful piece of role-reversal leaves us wondering whether The Chosen One might be comparatively sane after all.

We're back to war next, but this time the American accent's for real.

Rob Smith was raised in Alabama and has a surprisingly scientific background for a poet: he's been a professor of Aerospace Engineering in the US, and a director of an Artificial Intelligence research in the UK.

His prose piece is from the point of view of the modern, intelligent, anti-war son talking to his a redneck father.

The slug of politics and acute observation is wrapped with a discourse by the father on that most trivial of objects: the plastic anti-squashing widget that's supplied in the middle of pizza boxes.

As the "pizza box stander-upper" is lauded as a cornerstone of Western civilisation to an increasingly frustrated son, the story builds to a climax of slapstick symbolism.

During the second interval, I have to remind myself that I'm on a boat.

I have tuned out the engine and the rolling of the vessel, and it's only now, as we pass under bridges or sweep past bright harbourside lights, that I really become aware of the setting.

Shoe junkie

We're floating, isolated, in the middle of a city of half a million people. It's the perfect backdrop for poetry.

Then comes Claire Williamson: poet, counsellor, librettist for the Welsh National Opera, and veteran of the Words Allowed group which brought many of the performers here together.

She becomes her own lead character for "Shoes", an energetic and seriously silly poem depicting a shallow shoe junkie.

We start heading for deeper territory, though, through "The Sea", and later into the heart-wrenching pair of "When I Heard the News" and "The Hippocrene."

These last two, in which Claire explores her own reaction to her brother's suicide, show the true importance of poetry on a personal level, and perhaps demonstrates some of its healing powers.

Finally, if we'd been in a house, it would have been brought down by Lee Coombes' "My Girlfriend is Becoming a Bloke."

Lee, like Claire, has a talent for becoming his characters, and in this prose piece he plays both a put-upon boyfriend and the laddish girlfriend who abuses him.

There's a serious point here, not least because everyone is in hysterics at a story that would be everyday tragedy if the roles had not been reversed.

But Lee's delivery begs us to laugh both with him and at his characters.

It's a fine way to end the performances. The evening doesn't have to end, though. As we tie up at Welsh Back, the audience is invited along to a free entry into the boat-based club, Il Bordello.

I caught up with Nicola, the organiser. She told me that there are no plans yet for another Word Boat trip, but the evening had gone well, and tickets had run out fast, so she was keen to organise another event - perhaps on a larger boat.

Personally, I can't wait. It was great to spend a night out on the harbour, probably Bristol's most distinctive feature, and the performances were first-rate.