Gold from the Stone. Lemn Sissay

rich for a night. I danced to reggae music and returned the next day to Wood End where I was strip-searched and placed back in regulation clothing.

      With a birth certificate, a letter from my mother, and a fist full of poems I left The Institution with two aims. The first was to find my family. The second was to become the poet whom I already was. Due to being moved from institution to institution I didn’t know anyone who had known me for longer than a year. I was about to embark on a search for a family who didn’t know me either.

      In 1984, almost immediately after leaving Wood End, I approached a socialist printer called Stephen Hall of Eclipse Prints. I paid him on ‘tic’ (monthly) and printed 1,000 copies of Perceptions of the Pen which I sold to friends and the families of mill workers and striking miners. Poems from Perceptions of the Pen are in The New British Poetry, 1968–88 edited by Gillian Allnutt and Fred D’Aguiar (Paladin).

      Within a year I also set up my own business – A.S.W.A.D. Gutter Cleaning Services. I wrote a poem and printed it on a leaflet to drum up work. I posted it through the letterboxes of every house in my town. In 1986 I took my first play through a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe, at South Bridge Centre on Infirmary Street, with Pit Prop Theatre and Leigh Drama Centre. I had poems published in the local paper, The Leigh Reporter.

       ‘I am not defined by my scars but by the incredible ability to heal.’

      When my ladders were stolen the gutter-cleaning business was done, and so I moved from the Lilliputian villages of Lancashire to the great city, the OZ on the horizon – Manchester.

       ‘Child says to me in a workshop, “Are you famous?”I says, “The answer’s in the question.” ’

      What spurned my career then is the same as now – word of mouth. I started reading in community centres and theatres around the country. Word of Mouth. In 1987, when I was twenty, my poetry was accepted by Bogle L’Ouverture Publications in London. They were the first to publish Linton Kwesi Johnson in Voices of the Living and the Dead (1974) and Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). The publishers, Jessica and Eric Huntley, cared for me as parents would a rebellious child about to go off to university. Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist was published and a certain kind of national recognition ensued.

       ‘Integrate is not a Northern Compliment: “’n’t ’e great.”’

      Among others, the Caribbean poets in England laid the ground for me. Benjamin published his Pen Rhythm chapbook in 1980. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, John Agard, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Grace Nichols, Valerie Bloom, James Berry, and more. Linton has always been a royal presence as a man and reggae artist. Benjamin has always been the mature prince. Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, the queen. I read with them throughout the country. They introduced me. They created space for me. In turn I brought many of them to Manchester.

      In the 1980s most black poets had Caribbean accents. It would be some twenty years before second-generation African voices came through. I knew it then. The main Black British voices in poetry were Jackie Kay, Maud Sulter, Patience Agbabi, and myself. Is it a coincidence that three of them were either adopted or fostered and two of them were mixed race?

       “I’m a poet.”“But what does a poet do?” said the airhostess.Saying “write” seemed churlish. “I do readings around the world,” I said.She looked down at her palms.“Will you read mine?” she said.’

      In 1988, on publication of Tender Fingers, the Guardian ran a double-page article by Kate Muir: Lemn Sissay ‘has success printed across his forehead.’ But ‘Success’ was a spark in a match factory. I was relative to no one. What was success if I had no one to prove myself for or against?

      Any ‘Success’ printed across my forehead would only compound the unfathomable depths of loss. I could not release myself from this conundrum. I wanted to. I realised I would have to wait years for my friends to understand the importance of what they naturally took for granted. I would have to wait for them to have children, or for them to lose someone, before they felt a morsel of what I did. Thankfully some of them remember me saying as much.

       ‘“Famous poet” is an oxymoron.’

      To fulfill the role of ‘family’ I needed to prove what had happened to me in my first eighteen years, as there was no one else who could. I needed to find my family. I was performing around Britain and out across the world, writing commission, giving workshops, working in radio and all the stuff a young alive poet does. At each stage of my journey, and with each ‘success’ my sense of loss deepened.

       ‘Have we been waiting to be accepted for so long that not being accepted has become the criteria for our acceptance.’

      I may as well call it what it was. Racism. All the hallmarks were there. My name was stolen. I was stolen from my parents. I was experimented on. When the experiment didn’t work I was placed in a darker institution. I didn’t meet a black person until I was nine. I didn’t know a black person until I was seventeen. I was nicknamed ‘Chalky White’ as a teenager. I internalised this racism. I owned it. But everything in the sixteen years that preceded it was just a warm up. The day I said ‘stop’ was when the nightmare began. And I spoke about this in my readings and in my poems. I had to.

       ‘A Dutch MC asked me how she should introduce me on stage. “Just say ‘He loves what he does and he does what he loves’,” I replied. She walked on stage and said, “Lemn Sheeshay he likes what he does and does what he likes.”’

      But racism was a sideline. I couldn’t allow myself to be defined by how well I articulated what I didn’t like. As seductive as this was I found myself in a situation where my own anger could be commodified in the arts and, instinctively, I knew my anger ran too deep to be accommodated and paid for. There was a deeper level to anger, I believed. One that couldn’t be sold or bought.

       ‘Anger is an expression in the search for love.’

      I needed answers to bigger questions. Why was I in the children’s homes? Why did the foster parents throw me away? Who was my family? Where was I from? Why was I not returned to my mother? Why was my name changed? Where are the eighteen years of records about my life? I knew I had been lied to for seventeen years. The proof was in my name. The letter from my mother was to a social worker who had illegally named me after himself – Norman. I found my mother at twenty-one, in 1988. Tender Fingers is dedicated to her.

       ‘Life is not worth living if there is no one that you would die for.’

      Poetry was closer to me than family. My poems are photographs. And with two books under my belt at twenty-one they felt a point of record. There was nothing else that could bridge the emotional and physical stories other than poetry. My poems are my family. Sometimes when I perform or publish them it is like I’ve released them to scrutiny. It irritates me that anyone would criticise them. They are not perfect. They never pretended to be. They’re my family. They are at different stages of development. And that’s okay.

      In the early 1990s I moved to Bloodaxe Books. I needed to move from my beloved Bogle L’Ouverture and Bloodaxe accepted me in 1992. I was twenty-five. I’d been out of the institutions for seven years, published for four. Bloodaxe published my book Rebel Without Applause. It sold out. What they didn’t tell me was that they had no intention of reprinting. It would be eight years before I published another book. There was no Jessica and Eric to talk to. And Bloodaxe wouldn’t return my calls. I had no idea why.

       ‘They separated from me and pointed their fingers at me and shouted, “Are you integrating or separating or what?”’

      Regardless, I spent the next eight years writing and performing, making radio documentaries and writing plays. Occasionally I would contact Bloodaxe to ask when they would reprint. I was contracted to them. They did nothing. I continued