Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and mill workers of Wigan. 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. 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 our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one...
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, NEW STATESMAN, METRO, DAILY MAIL, SUNDAY EXPRESS and HERALD ‘A quest for understanding, for home, for answers’ Matt Haig How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how. 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...
Lemn Sissay brings together a stunning new collection, Morning Breaks in the Elevator. In Sissay's work, we witness declamation being honed and brought to fine art, establishing his reputation as one of the UK's foremost poets as he ably moves from loud protest through to quiet reflection.
Listener overflows with love poems, inner-city soap operas, reflections on history, mystery and felicity and much more. Every page sings with Sissay's unique voice – visionary, good-humoured and bursting with life.
Lemn Sissay's poems are laid into the streets of downtown Manchester, feature on the side of a public house in the same city and have been emblazoned on a central London bus route. He has been published in press as diverse as the the Times Literary Supplement and the Independent to The Face and Dazed & Confused. He has been commissioned to write poetry, documentaries and plays for Radio 1 and Radio 4. He has been involved in television in the roles of writing, performing and...
