Lemn Sissay MBE (born 21 May 1967) is an English author and broadcaster. In a sea of brilliantly coloured fabrics never has clothing seemed more important to the story we tell of ourselves TV producer and editor Janet Lee looks particularly confident in jazzy reds, hot oranges and cheeky pinks. He has authored collections of poetry and plays and his memoir My Name Is Why was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. Sometimes, if youve had my childhood, you try not to be defined by it, he says. I dont feel like its for me to make a story out of their sacrifices and goodwill., Director of access and participation, Rada, and co-director of We Are Bridge, Its so important to celebrate the successes, says Axa Hynes of the photoshoot at the Foundling Museum, but because there were so many hurdles it can also feel uncomfortable, a distraction from the deep, systemic societal change that has to happen. Hynes went into care aged 10, fostered by a family friend who had already been giving her family emotional and practical support. The abuse she endured, none of which came from her own family, was incomprehensible and frightening, she says. It felt affectionate then, but later I realised something wasnt right. A year later, the local authority released his birth certificate revealing the name his birth mother had given him, Lemn Sissay, and the letter requesting her sons return. They were just friends, says Cato, now an expert on Antiques Roadshow. You get to a point where you go, is my curiosity big enough to unsettle so much?, I became a journalist because I didnt see my community represented in the newsroom, says Sophia Alexandra Hall, an Oxford graduate who went into foster care as a teenager. Raise me with sunshineBathe me in lightWash all the shadowsThat fell from the night, 11 December 1974: There are no problems with Norman. Its been fine., Greg Bramble counts himself lucky that he and his brother Richard, also featured, had a stable experience with a foster family in Warwickshire, but leaving his birth family aged 10 was traumatic, and negotiating their new family life was often fraught. He wrote about the experience in his 2010 poetry collection Whistle, which was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes award and which Figura later turned into an Edinburgh show. After a succession of institutions, he left the care system, alone, and requested his files via customer services. He expected a certain amount of difficulty from the exposure but its not made anything weird at all, he says. Samaritans is a 24-hour service offering emotional support for anyone struggling to cope. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, has been chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2015, and joined the Foundling Museum 's board of trustees two years later, having previously been appointed one of the museum's fellows. Interviews by Killian Fox, I once was Christopher Goldsmith, reads a poem, neatly typed out on one side of a piece of A4 paper. A lot of care-experienced people will also measure success by how were feeling internally, how we manage our mental health and wellbeing, and not always what were achieving externally. Moved into a childrens home aged six, Saha then went to live with adoptive parents in Merseyside the following year a complex but positive experience for which he feels lots of gratitude. His mother, a young Ethiopian studying in England, had refused to give him up for adoption when he was born in 1967. Lemn Sissay reads from his new collection, Gold From the Stone, at Musicport festival in Whitby, 21-23 October, The poet talks about how his foster parents put him into care at the age of 12 and left him there, and finding his birth mother, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Lemn Sissay They treated me as if I was a Trojan horse sent into the family to destroy it., Lemn Sissay: My foster parents were good people who did bad things. My care experience was both traumatic and enlightening, says Johanan Walker, who went into care in east London after she had a baby at 12. Now, as he approaches his 55th birthday, he's added another: children's writer. Yemarshet Sissay came to England from her homeland, in 1966, planning to become a teacher so she could bring her new found skills back with her to Ethiopia to teach in schools there. He tapped the indicator and pulled quietly into a lay-by and turned the engine off. To mark National Poetry Day this month, poet and author Lemn Sissay muses on a country childhood of mixed blessings - and why this year he is more hopeful than ever. This is what I have chosen. I was always falling uphill, he says. They wanted me to ask God for forgiveness and through him I will learn to love them. Its like, should I be receiving all of this, should I even be doing it? he says. August 4, 2020. He told how he still had NG tattooed on him (for Norman Greenwood) but at that point changed his name and started the search for his mother who he finally tracked down in Gambia, where she worked for the United Nations. Lemn Sissay was stolen by the state. Lemn Sissay is an award-winning writer, poet, playwright, artist and broadcaster. Natalie Hirst, right, with a girl she met while visiting her grandmother at her caravan site. Audio CD. My brother Christopher is a year younger than me and I really loved him when I was a kid. It upset my brother when he realised what he hadnt taken on board., Photography/film rep, exec producer and consultant, In the 1990s Loo How, who was adopted at six weeks by a very Christian white family in Bristol, went on a journey to track down her biological parents. It was the sense of an underlining unkindness that stayed with me. Went on to talk about another placement for Norman without any consideration of how the boy might feel. Read the scriptures and give us your most honest and truthful answer tomorrow.. She wanted her child to be fostered while she studied. But there is no moment of revelation in this story where everybody hugs. Come what may, I may be knocked down, but I wont be down for long., Artist and founder member of the darkroom e5process, Tina Rowe first encountered racism when, aged six, she moved with her white adoptive family from a small Oxfordshire village to Malvern in Worcestershire. The Fostering Network is the UKs leading fostering charity; it champions fostering and seeks to create vital change. It was Lemn Sissay. None of us have ever gone back to look for our birth families. But his writing tells a subtly different story: And so, nearly half a century later/ nearer to the end of the journey/ than the beginning,/ those questions arise/ and may remain unanswered/ but arise anyway.. He recalled how becoming 12 years old, he started to develop into an adolescent and told the odd lie and stayed out late occasionally. Ive forgiven my foster mother. When Lennox Cato and his older brother were adopted by a white family in Brighton, they stayed in touch with their birth parents, who had come over from Grenada. As depicted in Steve McQueens TV series Small Axe, he was sent to live in Brixton, where his involvement in the 1981 uprisings led to his incarceration aged 18. 0 likes. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and. His is an extraordinary story of family, and identity, lost and . And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. $21.87 10 New from $16.75. In care from 11 to 17, Ben Ashcroft moved 51 times between foster parents, residential care, secure units, secure training centre, and finally a young offenders unit. Lemn means 'why' in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, where celebrated poet Lemn Sissay's mother was from. Lemn means 'why' in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, where celebrated poet Lemn Sissay's mother was from. You just get used to battling with everybody all the time, and you always have your guard up. Because its not just my story, its the story of the people that have been kind enough to reconnect with me and the people that were selfless enough to bring me up. Photograph: Hamish Brown/Contour The poet and broadcaster, 55, on the power of forgiveness,. Now Popoola is a novelist and an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins in London. Her experience of finding herself homeless and powerless after leaving care inspired her to start a campaign, calling4gr8ness.org to support young care leavers in the same predicament. It's Mrs Catherine Greenwood, my foster mother of the first eleven years. All I knew was that my birth mother, the woman who had my face and my blood, was from Africa and Africa was where poor people were. He shared the abuse he suffered during his formative years in the one-off show . Jenny Bagchi spent time in foster care and unregulated settings as a teenager before experiencing an abrupt end to care at 16. My friends. The journey took about 45 minutes, or 45 seconds. We can go on to do better if were just given the same life chances as other people. PAIN Parents against Injustice is a voluntary organisation, run and funded by volunteers who provide help and support to families caught in the care system. During this time, no care worker knew him for beyond a year and meanwhile he had lost his parents, his siblings and other family, his friends, his first girlfriend, his town and his identity. I was just nudging into adolescence at the time, and theyd recently had their third child, Helen. Lemn Sissay, writer and Chancellor of the University of Manchester, held the Great Hall of Bolton School Girls Division mesmerised during an emotional rollercoaster of an evening. We usually get the narrative told about us so its nice to tell it ourselves, she says. Its an incredibly common experience. Poet Lemn Sissay, with the help of Londons Foundling Museum, has gathered 59 athletes, artists, CEOs and others who, like him, spent part of their childhoods in care. I loved school. It was the end of December 1979 and I was excited when I entered the front room for the family meeting. An encounter with Sylvester Stallone in the Sinai desert, while working as an extra on Rambo III, prompted Mark Riddell to turn his turbulent care experience into a force for change. At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. Hes now a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and founder of a campaign group Every Child Leaving Care Matters. Why - and the search for the answer to why - became the word that defined Lemn . And in the Baptist faith a sinner must ask forgiveness for his sins. As he moved into adulthood he was given his birth certificate and saw that his real name was Lemn Sissay and that his mother was called Yemarshet. In that situation, a mother doesnt see her child, she is wrenched into the memory of the father. I felt incredibly cared for and looked after., When Paolo Hewitt was researching his care memoir, The Looked After Kid, in his early 40s, he went back to Burbank childrens home in Woking, where he lived from 10 to 18, and realised that it was actually a great experience, especially compared with the dismal years in foster care that preceded it. Answering questions, he said he is still angry but now it is more defined and he does not maintain the same anger of his youth. You felt like you had to grow up too fast., The issues around growing up in care dont magically stop at 25, just because public policy stops, says Jim Goddard, who went into care in Liverpool aged three. We want you to spend the next day thinking about love and what it is. Lemn Sissay, writer and Chancellor of the University of Manchester, held the Great Hall of Bolton School Girls' Division mesmerised during an emotional rollercoaster of an evening. I lost everybody. I wasnt given anything and nobody contacted me. Here are a few organisations for support and information: Become has been supporting and campaigning for children in care and young care leavers since 1985. Thats the number of times he was relocated between 11, when he and his brother were abandoned by their mother, and 17, when he decided he had to pull himself together. Mr Sissay with his godmother Ethiopia Alfred (Jonathan Brady/PA) After being reunited with his birth mother aged 18,. Poet Lemn Sissay says he felt obliged to accept his OBE because the award honours his younger self who overcame a "dehumanising" time in care. But its a bit of a B-movie of an existence. Overall, the experience was good, he says, but you dont feel like youve really lived your childhood. Even though his new catering business is thriving, Bramble often feels impostor syndrome. He received his MBE in 2010. Lemn Sissay was born in the village of Billinge, near Wigan, in 1967 to an Ethiopian mother. 4.15. In his memoir My Name is Why, the award-winning writer and poet tells the story of his fight for justice and finding hope and creativity while caught in an uncaring and dangerous bureaucracy. Author and national adviser for care leavers. Here is an extract from the book. Mr Sissay detailed his experiences in the British . We look at reclaiming the adoption narrative and reframing the worlds view on adoption, and also helping adult adoptees heal from their trauma.. 19 April 1978: There is a letter on file from Normans mother, written in 1968, requesting he be returned to her in Ethiopia perhaps Norman should be made aware of this? Social workers report, on which someone has written in block capitals, NOT YET I THINK. He felt that Normans successes were too many for [his brother] Christopher to cope with. He is also the editor of The Fire People: A Collection of Contemporary Black British Poets (1998), and his work has appeared in many anthologies. Sarah looked pretty as a picture in her blue floral dress. He learned that his real name was not Norman. I studied the question for a day and a night, I prayed to God, and I read the Bible to see if a passage would answer the question. Her adoption broke down when she was nine and she moved through various childrens homes around Manchester until leaving care at 17 because I came out as a lesbian and it was a Catholic childrens home. Theyd come down to see us and say hi. He was British and Ethiopian. He has authored collections of poetry and plays. At the age of 17, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his Birth Certificate. When he was six, his adoptive mother died and he was sent to live with relatives for 15 months, until his father remarried and he moved back home. I sat at the table and my mum looked at me intensely. His mother was asked to sign adoption papers, but refused; she wanted him back when she could manage better. A decade ago, Clare Gorham was very much pro transracial adoption. His love will shine through me and them. I carried a lot of anger for many years and then I realised that the anger is one of the things that kills people. My grandad and foster parents and I used to go down to the bay to get salmon, trout and mussels. Healing can hurt too. And it gave me comfort to see your views on forgiveness and forgetting, for whilst I can see the psychological argument in favour of forgiveness, I stand with the words of a Holocaust survivor, 'There is no such thing as closure; it is a word invented by people who . The experience was marked by contradictions relating to her race and religion: I remember I had chickenpox and I couldnt go to the mosque, but we were allowed to go and see the Queen as she was visiting the town. Encouragement from teachers spurred her on to become an artist (she was nominated for the Turner prize in 2007). Raise me with sunshine, bathe me in light: Lemn Sissay. At 12, Norman was sent away to childrens homes. My foster father was a teacher and my foster mother was a nurse. It is not sunny, but Lemn Sissay is sheltering behind dark shades, hunched over as he inhales cigarettes to feed his near-40-year habit. (He later rejoined his mother after she remarried.) If you just want to be? Baker was transracially fostered from 11 days old. Ludford began as a cleaner at Manchester city council before working her way up, earlier this year, to lord mayor. SOS #Dare2Care Gwynedd Council is calling for more care workers in Gwynedd. He asked me to yelp so it sounded like I was being punished. Buy My Name Is Why: Quick Reads 2022 Main - Quick Reads by Sissay, Lemn (ISBN: 9781838854645) from Amazon's Book Store. If youd asked me as a child, Id be like, Oh, Im adopted but its not a thing. Now he acknowledges that there is probably some degree of separation anxiety as a result of not being with my mother in those crucial first few weeks. Available in used condition with free delivery in the UK. The Care Leavers Association is a national user-led charity aimed at improving the lives of care leavers of all ages. Opening the evening with the epicMorning Breaks, he immediately pitched the listeners into a tale of the narrator clinging onto a branch for years before choosing to finally let go, having, throughout all his time in suspension, grown wings which enabled him to take flight. Every one of us has a different story, says Sissay, beaming around the room in a shirt that is playing catch-up with the sun. Ripped away from his Ethiopian mother in infancy, he endured over a decade of mistreatment and wilful cruelty in the British care system. Tomorrow came and I said it with pride because I thought I had found the answer they wanted me to find: I mustnt love you, I said. Becoming a young parent motivated her to return to education as an adult. Mum and Dad must have told everyone in my family to stay away from me. None of us have ever looked into our birth parents, he says. Growing up, the moment someone found out I was care-experienced, theyd make negative assumptions, says Lucy Reynolds, who had moved in and out of care eight times before being adopted aged seven. The answer was often because we are sinners. Sissay has spoken out about his care experience and its many traumas throughout his career as a poet and broadcaster. I remember the smell of wet heather, bracken and fern. His biological mother had traveled to from Ethiopia to England in the late 1960s and because she was pregnant and single was pushed to put her baby up for adoption. Where they are, we have been; where we are, they can go, says Akabusi who, like several others in the room, found his way through by joining the army. Christopher was their first-born, but I was their first. And it is my fault. Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. The lecture was the latest in a series of Arts and Science presentations which are taking place at the School in the evenings and are open to the general public. Lemn was the first person I saw on stage talking about being care-experienced and it blew my mind, says comedian, actor and writer Sophie Willan, best known as the creator and star of Bafta-winning BBC Two series Almas Not Normal. It was Lemn Sissay. He holds an English nationality and belongs to Black ethnicity. Music producer/writer; founder of clothing labels Duffer of St George and Sharpeye; author; one of the two creators of the rare groove scene; photographer; activist. Yes, you did.. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. These are the words of Mr Graves, the headteacher in my files, in January 1976, from the social workers report: Spoke to Mr Graves several times on the phone and eventually visited the school. Now hes a national adviser for England, advising the government and local authorities how to have a better leaving care offer to the more than 80,000 kids that weve got in care. Lemn was born in 1967; two months later, he was taken into care. Visiting my mum in hospital, Id see people screaming in straitjackets. The upside of his experience, he says, was that he had no fear from a very young age, and he connects this to his career successes DJing at Londons Wag Club in the 1980s, starting the clothing label Duffer of St George. The clamour of questions is almost deafening at Londons Foundling Museum one sunny July morning, when 59 people who, for many different reasons, spent all or part of their childhoods in care, gather for a historic photocall. It was Lemn Sissay. This is a great opportunity to celebrate our achievements, says Keith Saha of the Foundling Museum project. What happens if you want to be neither? I would have said that the only thing a child needs is love, she says, reflecting on her own experience of being happily adopted by her white family in Wimbledon in 1966. Lemn Sissay is a poet, author and broadcaster who was the official poet of the London Olympics in 2012. He thrives on praise and affection, in fact he cannot do without it. Social workers report, I hadnt realised I wasnt a happy child. They encouraged me in everything that Ive wanted to do. Which in Turners case meant becoming a musician hes a founder member of the rock band Elbow. It was only recently that one of her brothers acknowledged what shed gone through and apologised for failing to confront it. Mr and Mrs Greenwood realise there may be many problems ahead with Norman. The skies are grey. All my personal belongings went in the locker by the bed. Thered be many times in the future that I would play table tennis with myself by pushing the table against the wall. Several people point out that they are the lucky ones anyone who has been in a care home will know many who fell by the wayside. We fought with unbridled determination the way brothers do. 4 October 1979: The Greenwoods are seen by Norman as his parents, and they and their natural children meet his needs in every way. Social workers report. Instead of celebrating success despite the odds, we urgently need to improve the odds.. But dont be fooled, she says. His mother couldn't cope with him and his brother so they were put into the care of . I was shifted like I had never existed. When you are told by your parents that you are something you know you are not, it is very scary. She said: Take them off and give them to him. I didnt understand. Its listening to care-experienced young people Ive been working with that has empowered me to talk openly about it., Donna Ludford applied to become lord mayor of the City of Manchester to raise aspirations for young people in the care system. These are social graces that help us to move on.. If we spent long enough with each other, wed probably all start crying. I showed my love for him by punching him. He rebelled against the system and later ended up in detention centres and prisons, dealing with drug addiction. Why would I think anything else? Youre on your guard. Wallwein later dramatised her search for her birth mother in the acclaimed one-woman show (later a book) Glue. Im out here, on my own, doing the best I can, with the very little that any family member is going to offer me. Akabusi joined the British army aged 16 and later embarked on a glittering athletics career as a sprinter and hurdler. I wanted to be in care to get out of that situation. His experience in childrens homes and foster families between Surrey and Lancashire was excellent. He has been made an Honorary Doctor by the universities of Manchester, Kent, Huddersfield and Brunel. Charles Dickenss orphan Oliver Twist is one of scores of names plastered over the walls of the room where the volunteers gather for coffee and biscuits before the shoot, along with James Bond, Jane Eyre, Han Solo and Huckleberry Finn. He followed his dad into the antiques trade. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over twenty countries. Once her pregnancy became known, she was moved from Bracknell, Berkshire to Plodder Lane, Bolton. The internationally acclaimed poet and playwright Lemn Sissay OBE shares the story of his life by recalling five memorable dishes. Mum and Dad said I was like Macavity. He was badly bullied at school and his education suffered terribly, but he soldiered on and enrolled at Bird College aged 22 to study dance and musical theatre. I loved life. I found my birth father very quickly, because he was an actor, Louis Mahoney, who was a big activist for Black, Asian and ethnic minority rights in the actors union Equity, she says. Thank you to every venue that has booked me as a poet and writer over the past thirty five years. Poet Lemn Sissay, with the help of London's Foundling Museum, has gathered 59 athletes, artists, CEOs and others who, like him, spent part of their childhoods in care. Sheen has made a documentary about her experience, a powerful study of cultural displacement and linguistic disenfranchisement called Abandoned Adopted Here. My home situation was dire. The motivation, he says, comes from being 11 years old, losing my dad, going into a childrens home [Skircoat Lodge in Halifax], being really badly physically abused, ending up homeless, but then going back into the care sector and seeing that nothing had changed.. Lemn Sissay as a child, with his foster family He tells me what happened when he met his mother a decade ago. My brother Christopher was eight. When I was in the childrens homes, for years, I would play table tennis against a wall and imagine I was playing with him. The summer variety show hes directing with his students at Bird College, in Sidcup, south-east London, includes a song from the pickpocketing musical Oliver!, poignantly titled Boy for Sale. I was different. Ive had experiences with homelessness, she says, and its something that disproportionately affects people who are leaving foster care. . He lost touch at nightTheir fingertips withdrewNobody touched him, light,Except you. My own success happened in spite of my time in care, not because of it. I dont believe an adopted baby gets any less love from their parents than a child naturally born to them. It was a taxing legal process that ended three years later, in 2015, with an out-of-court settlement. I always feel these two years [at the childrens home] made it possible for me to be who I am today.. I appreciate it.. Its one of the things thats made me the happiest recently, the number of people who will happily associate themselves with their care experience, says Jonny Hoyle. Now my mindset is slightly different. In. Google "Lemn Sissay" and all the hits will be about him. She left home at 16 after coming out as gay an experience depicted in her 2011 memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Interspersing readings from his new collection Gold from the Stone with moving and raw recollections of his childhood, Lemn transfixed the audience. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's . This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Lemn Sissay, poet, performer and chancellor at the University of Manchester, was born in Billings Hospital near St Margaret's House for pregnant unmarried girls and women in Wigan, Greater. I was mostly well looked after, he says, and learned to be happy in my own company., Ive become somebody to whom family and community is incredibly important, says opera singer Jack Holton, who was born in Kent to a single mother with health issues and fostered at an early age. A story of neglect and determination lemn sissay brother christopher greenwood misfortune and hope, cruelty and.. Pregnancy became known, she says sheen has made a documentary about experience! Sissay was born in 1967 to an Ethiopian mother eleven years of which from. 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His experience in lemn sissay brother christopher greenwood homes and foster parents and I was their first-born, refused. Baptist faith a sinner must ask forgiveness for his safe return to education as an.. Try not to be defined by it, he says, we urgently need improve... In my family to stay away from his new catering business is thriving, Bramble often impostor. Saha of the Royal Society of Arts and founder of a B-movie of an existence Leaving care! Now a fellow of the Foundling Museum project to education as an adult in!, fostered by a family friend who had already been giving her family emotional and practical support back when could... To stay away from me in childrens homes and foster parents and I used go.
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