Katherine MacAlister talks to great poet and survivor Lemn Sissay

READING his own specially commissioned poem to a crowd of 20,000 people at The Somme Centenary was an occasion Lemn Sissay will never forget, perhaps the defining moment of his career. “That stands out above and beyond everything else. I was very proud to be there,” he accedes.

But there have been many to choose from; his MBE, meeting the Queen, his appointment as Chancellor of Manchester University, his commission for the 2012 Olympics, making BBC documentaries or being published.

What makes Lemn Sissay’s story even more inspiring is that he achieved all of these things, despite his terrible childhood. Yet one is unable to write about this great poet without outlining his upbringing, ones he draws on extensively throughout his work.

The 49-year-old’s story is a harrowing one, his tale of abandonment, adoption, care homes, neglect and rejection enough to bring even the strongest child to its knees. And yet here he is enthusing about coming to the Woodstock Poetry Festival: “I get a real kick out of it, whether it’s two people or 20,000 people. Besides, if it doesn’t mean something to you it won’t mean anything to them.”

Those of you who heard him on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs recently will already know that Lemn was given up for adoption as a baby, fostered by a Lancashire couple whom he called mum and dad, and then placed into care aged 12 where he remained until old enough to fend for himself. He was given his birth certificate on his 17th birthday and discovered his real mother was Ethiopian. Pledging to write poetry, find his birth mother and uncover what happened to him, he achieved all three – a testament to his determination even as a young man. That he went on to achieve such monumental success in the world of poetry is quite another, regardless of his shaky start. The 49-year-old was sent his official documents 10 months ago and discovered that his foster mother had suffered from post natal depression after the birth of her own three children and had severe financial worries.

“I was the fall guy but I didn’t see it coming. But all families have their problems. and adults can make big mistakes so it wasn’t my fault. The social work files back that up. They say I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

While others would have turned to drink, drugs or self-harming, Lemn turned to poetry, a cleaner at his care home remembering how he was always scribbling away in the corner, in a subsequent BBC documentary.

“I wouldn’t have got through it without the poetry. It allowed me to have a freedom away from the madness of the care system. It gave me an acknowledgement of my emotional state and helped me make sense of it all.”

“But then if you want to find out how a child in a care home is feeling don’t write an evaluation, get them to write a poem, or a song, or paint a picture, because poems are always truthful.”

His positivity certainly helped Lemn survive his own childhood, that and his ability to forgive the adults in his life who let him down. But more than anything, his innate need to write poems is, he thinks, what has ultimately kept him sane. “Many children in care homes think it is their fault that they are there. It was good to discover it wasn’t mine. And I have learnt to forgive my foster parents and in so doing have moved on, instead of carrying all this anger around with me.” Having traced his birth mother to The Gambia, “it’s complex,” he then discovered his father died in the 1970s.

And yet Lemn is an inspiring, cheerful, interesting, driven man, with a ready laugh and an honesty that sometimes takes your breath away. Sharing the intimate and painful details of his life doesn’t worry him in the slightest either. “Speaking out abut the truth doesn’t worry me. It’s part of who I am. I needed to answer a lot of my own questions, and no one else was going to.

“But I still don’t have the same context as other people and that’s the truth. I have never had a family to come home to, someone to say ‘well done’.

“So yes it has affected me but it didn’t crush me.

“It has taken a long time to get to where I am now and I have learnt that the most important thing is to be kind to yourself. On the other hand perhaps I just need someone to say ‘oh shut up and put the kettle on.’

And with that he’s off, leaving that poignant, self deprecating and insightful line floating in his absence, saying it all.

Woodstock Poetry Festival 2016

November 11-13

woodstockbookshop.co.uk