My friend Sue Dymoke, who has died aged 61, wrote poems from her earliest days. Her writing was fully ignited when she attended an Arvon Foundation writing course in 1986 with Ian McMillan as tutor. Her work began to appear in little magazines and pamphlets.

Her first full-length collection, The New Girls, was published by John Lucas’s Shoestring Press in 2004. Two more Shoestring collections followed: Moon at the Park and Ride (2012) and What They Left Behind (2019). A new collection, What to Do Next, is due to be published in time for a memorial celebration planned for November. For Sue, poetry was not a solitary vocation. She had a mission to demonstrate the importance of poetry to our society and particularly in the lives of young people, who are the main subjects of her widely published academic research.

Sue was born in Stevenage Old Town, Hertfordshire, to Jim, a joiner, and Peggy (nee Furr), a school dinner lady. The first poem she wrote, aged seven, at Letchmore Road infant school, was about mankind landing on the moon. She went on to the Barclay school, Stevenage Old Town, where her English teacher, Richard Wallace, inspired her to study the subject at the University of Nottingham. There, she went on to gain a PGCE with distinction in English, and her PhD, The Teaching of Poetry in Secondary Schools, which was awarded in 2000.

Sue taught for several years from 1984 in Nottinghamshire at Dayncourt comprehensive in Radcliffe-on-Trent, then moved to a higher level job at West Bridgford comprehensive school, where she was soon promoted to be head of English, the youngest in the county at the time, a job she held for eight years. She was then reader in education, running the PGCE programme, at the University of Leicester.

During this time she was diagnosed with the cancer that would be her companion for the rest of her life. She did not allow it to restrict her. She continued to write and publish her poems. She collaborated with researchers and universities around the world. She loved her visits to the universities of Hiroshima (Japan) and Auckland (New Zealand).

In 2019 Sue was appointed associate professor at Nottingham Trent University, leading its PhD programme and its education, policy and practice research group. She felt that she had found a true home there.

Of course, Sue was still writing. She wrote on her last conscious night, and said: “I’m happy I ended my life with a poem.” Sue travelled widely, enjoyed good food and wine, was a wonderful cook, and took delight in tending her garden and allotment. It was in that sunlit garden, four days before her death, that she and her partner of 40 years, the author David Belbin, celebrated their civil partnership by special licence.

Sue is survived by David, her younger brother, Dave, and two nephews, Michael and Harry.