Lemn Sissay

At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. Here Sissay recounts his life story. It is a story of neglect and determination. Misfortune and hope. Cruelty and...

Lemn Sissay's first poetry collection was written aged 18 and hand-sold to miners on the picket lines of Warrington. Since then his poems have been sculpted in iron and built from concrete, declaimed in over 20 countries. He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the 2012 Olympics, and to millions across the airwaves on BBC Radio 4 and across the nation's TV screens. He has become one...