I consulted with Writing West Midlands to appoint Casey Bailey as lead poet for Alumno’s new Pershore Junction building. Casey was Birmingham's Poet Laureate at the time.
Casey said: “This poetry is about a journey, I know this area around Dogppool Lane well and spent my youth around here. I came to the site to write the piece, it’s full of different roads and junctions and places to travel. I felt that it reflects the lives of the students living in the newbuilding itself, they are starting a journey or maybe ending one and their lives are constantly in motion.”
Casey's poem he poem has been cast using materials which relate to the historic rolling mills in the Selly Park area by sculptor Russell Coleman who also produced three sculptures for the buildings’courtyard. The poems materials relate to Birmingham’s history of jewellery making and the area’s history of heavy industry, ‘yellow metal’ production and rolling mills and are cast from recycled blast furnace waste and recycled glass and plastic.
