Poet Lemn Sissay on growing up in the care system, racism and finding his Ethiopian family
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At 14, Lemn Sissay inked his initials into his hand with a homemade tattoo. He didn’t write LS, but NG, for Norman Greenwood, which he thought was his name. Except that it wasn’t. His real identity had been withheld from him since he was born.
Born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Lemn Sissay was raised in care; first in a foster family and then, from the age of 12 to 18, in a string of children's homes, including the notorious Wood End assessment centre, where he was physically, emotionally and racially abused. Despite going on to become an award-winning and internationally acclaimed poet, the trauma of his harrowing childhood never left him, and has informed much of his work on and off the page.
Today on Ways to Change the World, he talks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about growing up in the care system, finding his identity as a British and Ethiopian man, and why the care system in the UK is failing children in need.
Produced by Silvia Maresca
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnam Giri Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives and the events that have helped shape them. |
| 0:13.0 | My guest this week is the poet Lem Sise. |
| 0:16.5 | Now Lem has had a remarkable life and could in his poetry as he says but he has done many things along the way. He has revealed a great deal about himself and his childhood and being a child in care who was long-term fostered. |
| 0:32.5 | A man who has been an activist, a playwright, a journalist, a speaker and he's achieved an awful lot. He's also a broadcaster and he makes lots of programs as well. So Lem, thank you for coming in. |
| 0:46.5 | Thank you. |
| 0:48.5 | This book that you have just released let the light pour in. |
| 0:52.5 | Yes, are the poems that you tweet and have done for a long time. |
| 0:58.5 | Yes. |
| 0:59.5 | And they are, well what are, are they quadrains? |
| 1:02.5 | The quadrains, what are they? |
| 1:04.5 | They're quadrains, they're four line poems that rhyme on the second and the fourth line. I write them first thing in the morning and then I put them out on socials, Instagram, not so much Twitter, it's called X now, Facebook, etc. |
| 1:18.5 | And they are, are my immediate consolidation of what I'm feeling where I am and what is about to happen possibly. |
| 1:30.5 | So you write them on the day? |
| 1:31.5 | I write them on the day. |
| 1:32.5 | You don't stack them up and then say that one's for Monday, that one's for Tuesday. |
| 1:35.5 | No, I don't because I haven't got the time but it's a great way of starting the day is to have a creative injection, a connection with the world which is through my primary concern, which is poetry. |
| 1:47.5 | And by the way, Christian and I need to admit this, some of them are terrible. |
| 1:52.5 | Okay, that's, that's the way it is. |
| 1:55.5 | Not the ones in the book, but when I put them out in the morning, I have an hour to write it or two hours and that's it. |
| 2:02.5 | And I like that, I like the, I like the risk of writing in the moment and sending it out, sending it out in the moment. |
| 2:13.5 | I like it. |
| 2:14.5 | Now it's called let the light pour in and they are amazingly cheerful. |
... |
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