My friend Joanna Skelt, who has died of cancer aged 49, explored writing as an expression of conflict and identity. As Birmingham’s poet laureate in 2013-14, she found inspiration in the city’s diversity and restless energy.
She brought the electric excitement of the Blackpool illuminations to a live-poetry Christmas lights switch-on in Stirchley, ran writing workshops that linked schools from Freetown, Sierra Leone, with the city, and worked with musicians from Symphony Hall. In Connected Journeys, the title poem of her 2014 collection, she wrote of Birmingham:
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