British poet Lemn Sissay: 'I left care with poems that were like emotional witness statements'
When Sissay was 12, he was given back to social services by his foster family who had taken him in as a baby. He knew from then he wanted to be a poet for life.
Every day for 10 years, OBE recipient Lemn Sissay rose at dawn and wrote a four-line poem.
"How do you do it? said night,
How do you wake and shine?
I keep it simple, said light.
One day at a time."
This one starts his book Morning Poems - let the light shine in and has even been adopted by a group of people who sing during summer solstice at the Stonehenge as they watch the sun rise with the wider community.
His book compiles 200 of his thousands of morning poems, which he wrote and published online for free over the years. He says they've captured a bit of popularity, with his words strewn across building walls, in social media captions, inked in tattoos and captured in singing.
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To him, these words and thoughts are life-affirming and encapsulate wonders of the world and nature.
"I just wanted to get in touch in the morning with something that was bigger than myself, that was not connected to a link or to a web page and that kind of fed my spirit," Sissay tells Nine to Noon.
"Light and nature forms not the backdrop, but the metaphor, the symbolism for a state of mind. So they're not all positive. I don't wake up like all happy clappy, but I allow something that's bigger than me to speak to me.
"Wonder is free, to be surprised, to be open to fresh experiences in something that happens to us every day … This is part of what it is to be a human being in a world which is trying to fill our heads constantly with information and try to sell us things."
His journey with poetry began from the age of 12, when he was given back to social services by his foster family who had taken him in from when he was a baby.
"Remember, you were loved.
I felt your spirit grow.
I held on for the love of you.
And then for love, let go."
British poet, Lemn Sissay on his "experiment in hope,"
The poet is now advocate for children in care. He won a case against England's Wigan Council in 2018 for the mistreatment he received as a child.
"It is exactly why an artist creates art. It's to change their world first. I want to change my world. I wanna set myself right, and, you know, these have become songs, they've become tattoos… People have them put them on the walls of their buildings."
"My roots twisted far away,
from the family tree.
I searched forests to find her,
to ask if she would find me."
His unique story of searching for his family gives insight into the human struggle of finding family – even when they're near us, he says.
"When I left [state care] at 18, I was given my birth certificate and I was given a letter from my birth mother from 18 years earlier, pleading for me back, to the social worker to whom she gave me to, to have me fostered, not adopted, for a short period of time while she studied…
"So the social worker gave me to foster parents, said treat this as an adoption, he's yours forever… at 12 years of age, they put me into care and said they would never visit me and never speak to me and they never did. And I lost everybody.
"It's like living my life backwards, you know, I left care with poems that were like emotional witness statements. And that's all poems are by the way. They don't have to be published and they don't actually have to be about the big subjects in your life - a description of the sun and the sky, one day will mean nature to you, it'll mean something much bigger on another day.
"But they were my emotional witness statements of my time in care, that something wrong had happened to me, to be 18 years of age and to have no family, no mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, nobody to call you on your birthday, nobody at Christmas, nobody to want you to come home. Nobody to miss you if you leave.
"I knew that somebody had to be made responsible for what happened and that I needed to find my family, and that I would continue to write poetry."
In 2012, Sissay was the commissioned poet for the London Olympics. He was the Chancellor of the University of Manchester for seven years and a trustee of the Foundling Museum in London - which celebrates those who have been in care.
Looking back, he says he can see the flags in the mountainside marking his milestones.
"I knew I would use any attention that I got as a writer to bring [light] to my story, not because I was saddened with illness, and I had to unburden my story on the nation here in England. But because somebody had to be accountable for what happened to me.
"I do it for me. I'm not the pied Piper. I share my story, and that helps light other things."
Sissay will be appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival 13 - 18 May.
Book cover of Let The Light Pour In, by Lemn Sissay.
Supplied / Canongate
