Lemn Sissay, Poet and Playwright HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk,

I'm Stephen Sackur.

A dangerous to generalise about the

human impulse to create art. But it

does seem it is often linked to the

experience of dark, painful places.

My guest today is a renowned poet

and playwright whose writing and

performance is laid bare his own

intimate wounds. Lemn Sissay was

abandoned as a baby, rejected why

his foster family, abused in public

institutions of care. He has since

been on a quest to understand his

past and piece together his

identity. Along the way, he found a

remarkable poetic voice. How?

Lemn Sissay, welcome to HARDtalk.

Hello, Stephen.

You are a writer, a

poet, but you are also a public

performer. One is very solitary, one

by definition is clearly public.

Which is the more authentic,

comfortable you?

You know, I think

they are both authentic, and both

comfortable. You need to... You need

to... You need to be a loan to write

and to explore, and to find these

sort of chemical compound of the

Pulham. And you need to read on

stage so that that chemical compound

blows in the fireworks and sheds

light -- poem. You know...

And as

for poetry as opposed to other art

forms, you have done other things,

and in particular you have written

quite a lot of plays, but I think

you have said poetry is your truest

self, the voice that lives at the

back of your mind. Is there

something special for you about

poetry?

As a child, poetry was a

place where I could find a familial

resonance. In other words, when I

had no family as a child, the

writing of poetry would act as

memory, so that I could identify

where I had been, who I had been

with, what I felt, at any given sort

of time in my childhood. And that is

really what family does. And in lieu

of that, poetry allowed me to have a

place to look back out and say, oh,

I was there then.

You mean, and I

don't want to be too literal, but

POMS are almost like you're

surrogate family?

Exactly. If family

is a set of disputed memories

between one group of people over a

lifetime, which I didn't have, I

didn't have anyone to dispute the

memory, memory is an essential part

of family. And my poems were memory

of any given event in my life.

Well,

you have introduced the already two

thoughts about your childhood, and

the colours so much of your writing.

And I guess your take on the world,

really, what you went through as a

child, as a young one. So I do want

to talk about it a little bit. And,

for people who don't know your

story, I mean, your mum was a young

Ethiopian woman who came to the UK

to study, I think.

She came in the

expansion of Ethiopia through the

emperor, who was sending out

students across the world to get

education and then to and feed back

into the growth of Ethiopia. It was

a very exciting time in Ethiopia at

that time.

What she pregnant,

actually, when she arrived?

Good

question. I am not sure she was

pregnant when she arrived. I think I

was conceived quite literally in the

journey.

Interesting, but here she

was, a young woman in a new country,

an alien culture, trying to find her

place. And she then found herself

pregnant, had the baby, and clearly

decided she could not live her life

with this baby at this particular

time, and decided to give it up, you

are, of course.

Women are

incredible, OK? In the act of giving

a child away to be fostered or

adopted is to me the action of a

heroine. And what my mother did she

asked me to be fostered for a short

period of time while she studied so

she could then take me back to

Ethiopia, say a year, a year and a

half? The social worker gave me to

foster parent censored treat this as

an adoption, he is yours forever,

his name is Norman.

That was a

fundamental deception which change

the course of your life.

It utterly

changed the course of my life, yes.

So my foster parents took me and

they said we are your parents now,

and we are your parents forever. And

I thought they were my mum and dad.

They grew up in the north of

England...

In a very, it has to be

said, White, fairly insular

community, where you were this brown

skinned baby and a complete sort of

novelty, an alien to many of the

people in the community.

The first

time I met a black person I was nine

years of age. So the foster parents

held me there and said that they

were mine forever, and at 12 years

of age, they put me on the

children's homes and said that they

would never contact me again, and

didn't.

You know, you have had years

and years to reflect on this. Why do

you think they rejected you? Having

raised you for 12 years, and then

sent you a way for no more contact,

it seems the most extraordinarily

cruel and strange thing to do.

Days... I was going through

adolescence. So I was the eldest

child in the family, and I was

taking biscuits from the tin without

saying please and thank you. I was

staying out late with my friends.

And they had not had an adolescent

before. And this is what I think.

But you were 12, he worked 16. You

won't sniffing glue or committing

serious crimes.

No, I wasn't doing

that either. They... They were... Do

you know, they meant to do the best

for me, I think, but they were

naive. And they were also extremely

religious, and they perceived that

the devil was working in this

equation, and... And yes, that is

what they did.

It is... It is the

most immense, complete form of

rejection.

Yes, and it was complete.

I lost in the body. I lost my

mother, my father, my sisters, my

brothers, my aunts, my uncles, my

grandparents, my town, my first

girlfriend. From that point onwards

I was in no contact with any of the

family ever. And I was placed in the

children's homes with lots of other

children who had come from abused

families, and et cetera.

And you

were abused. I mean, there was

racism and there was physical abuse.

There was racism, there was physical

abuse. I was in Woodend assessment

Centre at 17 years of age, so I was

held in a virtual prison for

children for about eight months.

This notion that you have already

talked about, of writing poetry in a

sense to store memory, in a way the

poems being the witnesses to what

you are going through, when did that

began? Did that began when you are

in the children's home?

Yes, it

began at 12 years of age. He knew

what I wanted to be. I have always

been clear I wanted to be a poet, I

was very clear about that and I made

a BBC radio documentary where one of

the staff in the children's home,

one of the cleaners... Cleaners are

really interesting people in

institutions, because they see

everything. They see what's wrong

and they see what's right. And

because they are not staff, they are

not social workers, they see

everything. They are quite an

incredible resource to a child,

actually. They they should be paid

more. But one cleaner said I

remember you in the children's home,

and I remember when you were

writing, and I remember you

scribbling your pieces of paper and

throwing them away and starting

again, et cetera.

I should say, we

have discussed this, because you

have agreed to do it, I want you to

read a poem, because I want people

to get a flavour of the poetry, and

your voice, as well, and it is

called Children's a bigger home, and

it is a very powerful and a very

bleak description of what a bit of

it felt like. But I just wonder...

This sort of poetry, which is

somewhat typical of things you have

reflect upon in your life, and about

your past, is there something -- is

this something you wrote long

afterwards? When did you write down

some of these things, some of these

memories?

I know that I wrote some

of these at the time, and I wrote

some of them after leaving care. You

know, you really do live your

childhood out in your adult life. It

is not in your childhood that the

abuse of being in care actually come

to life. It is when you leaving you

draw on your childhood as you grow

into an adult. It is then that you

see the effect that it has had on

you. And it is then that you look

back and realise whatever abuses

have happened to you.

Can we hear

this one verse from Children's Home.

Yes, one verse from children's home.

We had been given booby-trapped

timebombs, trigger wires hidden,

strapped on the inside. He became a

place of controlled explosions, self

mutilations, screams, suicide. Of

young people returned, returned to

sender. Half lit dorms of midnight

moans. We might well have all been

children, but this was never a

children's home.

Mutilation, screams

and suicide.

Yes, all of those

things happened in the care system,

some of them... Yes.

I mean, you

have been through the most

extraordinary journey in recent

years, because you, having reflect

that for so long on what happened to

you, you decided you are going to

seek some sort of legal recourse

against the council, that lied to

you, like you about your own mother,

about your own history and identity,

and kept you in those homes for five

or six years. And, in the course of

taking them to court, you had to go

through a psychologist's report. An

in-depth sort of forensic look deep

into your psyche.

Yes.

That, I

imagine, has reintroduced due to so

much of the pain that has been

inside you for so long.

Yes. I would

say that, when somebody else takes a

look at your life, and they... They

break it down into... Into a report,

which outlines the damage that was

done to you via your childhood,

that's quite... That's quite an

event, to read that.

Well, I will

tell you what is even more

extraordinary, is your decision to

only see and hear what was in that

report live, as it were, on a

theatre stage, when a fellow actor

played the role of the psychologist,

and read the report to you, and you

sat in a chair and listened. And it

was the first time you have ever

heard it, listened to this long

exposition of the damage done to

you, including the post- traumatic

stress, the abuse of alcohol, other

forms of mental damage that the

psychologist found in you, and you

took it all in front of an audience,

on stage. A 1-off, completely

extraordinary performance. Why did

you do that?

I did it because other

people have been through this

process, particularly in Wales, and

they have had a psychologist report

written about them, and the suicide

rate of people who have been through

this process is high. So I didn't

want that, I didn't want that to

happen to me. So I felt safer to

hear the report read to me on stage

by an actor here in England, and I

feel safer on stage than I do it, is

probably the truth.

What was it like

listening to it?

It was quite

disturbing, and it... What it was

quite liberating as well, because

there were 350 people, 400 people,

at the Royal Court Theatre in west

London. There just to support me.

Just to be with me, just to hold me

in mind. It was like being hugged by

a nation. It was a beautiful event,

and I'm proud to have done it. I

have not looked at the report since

then, no, I haven't. And I won't.

You have talked about how any

society can be judged by the way

deals with the children who do not

have their own families, who are

institutionalised, cared for by the

State. You said in 2012 you can

define how strong a democracy is by

how its government treats this kind

of child. I don't mean children, I

mean the child of the state.

Yes. If

you are in care, the government is

legally your parents. So...

And what

does it say about the Britain that

you have grown up in, your

treatment, what happened to you?

What does it say? And, you know,

children still struggle and suffer

in care today.

all the care system in England

solely from my family.

The care

worker Mimi after himself.

You are

briefly called Norman, won't you?

18

years! It locked me away and

presently a child. Yes, I won't

redress do that.

And that is

important, clearly, because you have

pursued that with determination. But

there is something us about you

which fascinates me, and is that

idea of forgiveness. Because as you

have conducted your career and

becoming a renowned poet, you have

been on a long-term quest to find

family, to find your own birth

mother, make sense of her life and

her decisions, and the sort of half

siblings that you have around the

world. I am surprised that you have

friend that in terms of forgiveness

rather than in anger, in a way. Is

there no angry new?

I have been

angry. I have been incredibly angry.

I have been hurt and I have come to

realise, well, I am not defined by

my scars, but by the incredible

ability to heal. And that

forgiveness is part of healing, and

that it is really important that I

forgive my foster parents and I

forgive social services here in

England that store my mother from

me, and I should forgive my mother

because it is very difficult when an

adult child comes back to find you.

It was very difficult for her, I

think.

People watching this would

probably want to believe that when

you find your birth mother, and when

you went back to your foster

parents, much later in life, when he

became a successful artist, what we

would perhaps all like to believe is

that you found relationships that

were meaningful, that you had found

family, in a way, in these two

different strands of your life. Did

you?

I think I've found - I think it

is collocated when you find your

family, my father's family, in his

brothers and sisters, my aunts and

uncles, my mother and her

children...

We are talking about the

birth family, now. The Ethiopian

family. Are they in your life today?

I now know who my family is. The

truth is that it is very difficult

for them or for me or for any of us

to form familial relationships. They

are all good people. But it is quite

shocking when somebody comes into

your family, like me.

In a sense and

innocence demands of them a form of

truth telling. -- in a sense demands

a form of truth telling.

Families

are OK. They want the truth

structure just as it is.

Unfortunately I challenge that.

Does

that mean you can't... And I can

tell this is extremely difficult

view, but does that mean that you

cannot really have long-term close

relationships with these people from

your life?

You would have to ask

them about that. I mean, just

imagine somebody coming into your

house and standing there and saying

OK, I am now the oldest brother, and

by the way, your parents were

sleeping with other people at some

point in their life that you do not

know about, and staff. And so I

think that possibly - possibly, I do

know, family is about what is not

said. -- and stuff. It is about not

seeing things. It is about holding

their collective group in mind. I'm

somebody who wants answers. My name,

in the language of my origins, it

means time. Ethiopians now know me

as the person called and stuff. --

know me as the person called why. In

the land which of my origins, it

means why. Having a name like that

is a challenge to his family. And I

don't know how families work, so I

am not very... I am not very

equipped to understand the

subtleties of family. So no, I'd

don't, most of my family to speak to

me. My father's children and my

mother's children, actually, and you

know, yes, it is complicated,

Stephen.

Throughout all of this, I

have called it a quest. It involved

your foster parents and talking to

them, too. But through all of us,

you have kept writing. It seems to

me that there is serving addressing

about your creativity and your

poetry in particular. You see that

you have delivered the moment. You

say, you know, I cannot live in the

past, and they cannot look too far

into the future. I had to be and

they have to create in the here and

now. And I understand that. And yet

so much of your writing, in this

sort of anthology and others, is

actually about this past. So you do

go back all the time in your head.

I

have delivered the present. Thank

you for the reminder. Now we can

start the interview. Because that is

a survival technique.

But the

present is actually a product of you

coming to terms and coping with and

weaving stories about your past. You

cannot separate them. Jeev make if

you live in the past, you are not in

the present.

And you are not alive

and real and authentic and true to

yourself. -- if you live in the

past. I do believe I live in my

past. In terms of my writing. I

write about what inspires me at the

time. And if that includes my time

in the children's homes, then that

is all well and good, but what

happened then affects away now. I

think living in the present is a way

of living the best life that you can

live, and forgiveness is one of the

best ways of being able to live in

the present, because otherwise you

Rory 's --

-- otherwise you always live in the

past. You go through the process of

anger, you'd go through the process

of war, and then you have to look at

yourself and equip yourself with the

process of peace. That is crucial to

anyone you communicate with. And if

all you have ever had is the defence

mechanisms or the fight or flight

mechanism, then you how to learn new

ways of being true true to make to

yourself and those around you. Being

in the present is one of the ways to

do that. -- being true to yourself

and those around you.

Neil Young

life, you are so much an outsider

and so much alone, and I think you

reflected on the fact that you did

not have anybody who had known you

for longer than one year. -- in your

young life. That is an

extraordinarily difficult and

isolating place to be in many ways.

And now you are an artist who is

widely respected and renowned. You

have received all sorts of

accolades. A gong from the Queen.

You have your ponds inscribed in

Grenot in London and Manchester. You

were the official poet gains. And of

course you at the Chancellor of

majesty university, which is a

lovely and highly prestigious thing

to be. Do you no longer feel like an

outsider? -- the official port of

the Olympic Games.

We all feel like

an outsider. For ever, whether we

are inside or not. It is OK to be an

outsider. It gives you a unique

perspective. There are tons of us

who are outsiders who have lived

through the care system and who have

become successful, but I'm

successful in spite of what happened

to me, not because of what happened

to me.

So this notion of art, and

reflect on this in the beginning

when I reflected on our coming out

of dark and painful places, you

don't believe that your art was, in

a sense, it that you're suffering

was a requirement to you to be the

others that you are?

No, you need to

fill a reason to write. That is all

you need. It is not had to be about

experience. You do not need to have

a bad express to be a good artist.

Otherwise I would tell people to

have a bad experience to become a

good artist. That is not true. We

all have stories. One of the things

that I treasure is the fact that a

story like mine allows me to build

ridges to people. And for people to

build bridges to me. I don't feel

isolated as much as I feel I have a

reason to Connecticut. -- allows me

to build bridges to people. Allows

me to communicate. And that is a

gift. -- I have a reason to

communicate.

Thank you for joining

us on HARDtalk It is an honour, man.

Thank you very much indeed.