"Margaret Thatcher was my mother," he says, beginning his story. . She is now employed by the NHS in Greater Manchester, leading a programme to create trauma responsive communities and organisations and to improve health outcomes and opportunities across the region. It was the end of December 1979 and I was excited when I entered the front room for the family meeting. Mum told me they will never visit me because it is my choice to leave them because I didnt love them. Buy My Name Is Why By Lemn Sissay. None of it. I had no idea what he meant. The care-experienced movement is shaping some of the thinking that people in care are talented and have so much potential. I had nothing to put in the locker by my bed. Read the scriptures and give us your most honest and truthful answer tomorrow.. He had a brother and sister, Christopher and Sarah, and then Mrs Greenwood had another child, Helen. This led me to the answer I thought they wanted me to get to. Charles Dickenss orphan Oliver Twist is one of scores of names plastered over the walls of the room where the volunteers gather for coffee and biscuits before the shoot, along with James Bond, Jane Eyre, Han Solo and Huckleberry Finn. The church. When you are told by your parents that you are something you know you are not, it is very scary. Music producer/writer; founder of clothing labels Duffer of St George and Sharpeye; author; one of the two creators of the rare groove scene; photographer; activist. 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. Often, I would. I loved my family. When he was four, Kriss Akabusis parents returned to Nigeria, leaving him alone in the UK with his younger brother. I loved life: Lemn Sissay with friends in the days when he believed his name was Norman. Buy a copy for 11.99 at guardianbookshop.com, Lemn Sissay will be at Southbank Centre on 18 October as part of the London Literature Festival, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. For more information about the Foundling Museum in London see foundlingmuseum.org.uk. I am, as I have ever been, interested to hear anything Catherine has to say about the eleven year old boy who she and her husband placed into care. Thats all I knew. They encouraged me in everything that Ive wanted to do. Which in Turners case meant becoming a musician hes a founder member of the rock band Elbow. His mother, a young Ethiopian studying in England, had refused to give him up for adoption when he was born in 1967. It was Lemn Sissay. Ive had experiences with homelessness, she says, and its something that disproportionately affects people who are leaving foster care. You dont love us, you dont want to be with us? All of this happened the day after they had made this call to the social worker. Im always moving on to the next thing and thinking somethings going to go wrong., Artistic director, 20 Stories High theatre company. Why - and the search for the answer to why - became the word that defined Lemn . She showed him a letter that she had written in 1968, 4 months after he had been born, in which she pleaded, to no avail, that he be given back to her to live with his own people. Im 12. The summer variety show hes directing with his students at Bird College, in Sidcup, south-east London, includes a song from the pickpocketing musical Oliver!, poignantly titled Boy for Sale. Its about thriving in life and doing what makes you happy., Zarina Bhimji was taken into a childrens home at 14, then a foster family. He told how he still had NG tattooed on him (for Norman Greenwood) but at that point changed his name and started the search for his mother who he finally tracked down in Gambia, where she worked for the United Nations. Just me. The lecture was the latest in a series of Arts and Science presentations which are taking place at the School in the evenings and are open to the general public. Ive loved mussels ever since. In junior school, he proudly announced that he was adopted and half-Pakistani. After a succession of institutions, he left the care system, alone, and requested his files via customer services. They were happy, he says. All images courtesy of contributors, Council where Logan Mwangi was murdered worryingly dependent on agency care, Councils in England and Wales pay 1m a year to house child in private care home, Private childrens home bosses in England criticised over huge profits, Council paid 60k a week for wholly unsuitable place for vulnerable girl, Almost a third of disabled children and teenagers face abuse, global study finds, UKhas sleepwalked into dysfunctional childrens social care market, says regulator, Revealed: money for educating excluded children funded Bolton bar owners social life, Bolton childrens home shut down for serious and widespread failures, Access to NHS mental health for children remains a postcode lottery, Childrens social care system unfit for purpose in England, Key to the photo of people whove spent time in care, with a list of their names, the notorious Shirley Oaks childrens home. Its not a shameful thing any more. Hoyle went into care as a young teenager and at 18 he set up a charity for care leavers called A National Voice: We campaigned to stop children in care leaving with their belongings in bin bags. Now he works for North Yorkshire county council identifying and implementing ways that we can make life better for children in care. Lemn Sissay, one of our best-loved poets, was fostered as a baby. Theyre part of a poem-a-day project by their author Paul Cookson, who was born in the north of England and adopted shortly afterwards by a family in Essex. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, has been chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2015, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trustees two years later, having previously been appointed one of the museum's fellows. Google "Lemn Sissay" and all the hits will be about him. I still think love is the most important thing. Christopher Goldsmith lived for a month, he writes, then quietly died, slipped away/ Almost never existed Christopher died so that I might have life/ and have it more abundantly.. The memoir was warmly received, though Jenkins, who edits Observer Food Monthly, has mixed feelings about becoming a figurehead for care-experienced people. You get to a point where you go, is my curiosity big enough to unsettle so much?, I became a journalist because I didnt see my community represented in the newsroom, says Sophia Alexandra Hall, an Oxford graduate who went into foster care as a teenager. She left you She didnt want you If I find her, I will scratch her eyes out How could she My mums love was elevated by how much she hated my birth mother for leaving me. He put me gently in the car. He holds an English nationality and belongs to Black ethnicity. I was 10 and we were off to a wedding in our new clothes. Sarah looked pretty as a picture in her blue floral dress. This photograph alone proves that with the right support and opportunities, those stereotypes are false.. Overall, the experience was good, he says, but you dont feel like youve really lived your childhood. Even though his new catering business is thriving, Bramble often feels impostor syndrome. Interspersing readings from his new collection Gold from the Stone with moving and raw recollections of his childhood, Lemn transfixed the audience. Marcus Clarke with his new carer on the day he entered NCH Sheringham. The foster parents, Catherine and David Greenwood, went on to have three children of their own. I dont believe an adopted baby gets any less love from their parents than a child naturally born to them. By isolating and highlighting the success of care-experienced people it can become voyeuristic and soothes decision-makers into thinking that meritocracy is real. He lost touch at nightTheir fingertips withdrewNobody touched him, light,Except you. My foster father was a teacher and my foster mother was a nurse. From 13, he lived at a Barnardos care home in Ripon, North Yorkshire. Riordan was in respite care several times during his first four years. He is now Birds principal and artistic director. Come what may, I may be knocked down, but I wont be down for long., Artist and founder member of the darkroom e5process, Tina Rowe first encountered racism when, aged six, she moved with her white adoptive family from a small Oxfordshire village to Malvern in Worcestershire. It was a question to which I already had the answer. A poem by Lemn Sissay. My own success happened in spite of my time in care, not because of it. 248 ratings29 reviews. I just felt I had to hide it, says Sophie Willan, creator and star of Almas Not Normal, of her experience in care she spent much of her childhood in foster care in Bolton. In prison I became an avid reader, he says an experience that paved the way for his career as a novelist. Now he works as a theatre-maker working with young and emerging artists, many of whom are also care-experienced. I learned a lot about life, about loyalty, about being non-judgmental. His shattering, light-searching memoir, My Name Is Why, is the result. It's a bolt from the blue. Born in 1967, Sissay was the child of an Ethiopian mother who was forced to give up her son against her will; he was fostered by a white couple from Lancashire who sent him back into care aged. This was the beginning of empty Christmas time and hollow birthdays. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. $12.79 12 Used from $6.23 32 New from $8.47. 4.15. Lemn means 'why' in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, where celebrated poet Lemn Sissay's mother was from. So, stealing biscuits from the tin, taking pieces of cake without saying please and thank you, staying out late at night, the occasional cigarette they saw this as the devil working inside of me. Social services placed the baby Lemn into long-term foster care, advising the foster family to treat this as adoption. He asked me to yelp so it sounded like I was being punished. I wanted to be in care to get out of that situation. His experience in childrens homes and foster families between Surrey and Lancashire was excellent. Accidentally shares video of daughter over it can Listen to Capital Spoilers September 20 It taught me the middle-class way of life: how to lay a table and make a bed and eat with a knife and fork. One thing many share is dark memories of the shame and stigma they suffered. For ever, for ages, until the end came, no matter how volatile the day had been, Id pray shed open the bedroom door before I slept, Id pray shed sit on the edge of my bed and sing me to sleep as she did when I was younger. The poemEmperors Butterfly Makerpaid tribute to the artists and entertainers who fill our leisure time he reminded the audience that once we have made our money we turn to music or poetry or art or literature, all of which have been imagined by someone. Available in used condition with free delivery in the UK. Being in foster care is probably the primary reason why I had a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, says Derek Owusu, whose award-winning debut novel, That Reminds Me, explores the after-effects of a childhood in care. This is an edited extract from My Name Is Why: a Memoir by Lemn Sissay, published by Canongate on 29 August at 16.99. I have no one to dispute or agree on the memory of me, good or bad. This was quickly followed bySuitcases and Muddy Parkswhich spoke of proving yourself to your parents and he fleetingly remembered how his own mum and dad went off one way, whilst he went off with a social worker. It was a taxing legal process that ended three years later, in 2015, with an out-of-court settlement. Mrs Greenwood does not think of the boy as a foster child. He learned that his real name was not Norman. This is what I have chosen. I hadnt realised then but none of them would contact me ever again for the rest of my life. Riddell wrote a memoir called The Cornflake Kid. Healing can hurt too. I just felt this overwhelming relief when I found out the truth, he says, because I was always told, they didnt want you. For Fretwell, writing and making films is a way of dealing with both his care experience and the racism he suffered growing up in Bognor Regis. We passed the butchers and the chemists and Wigan Road and passed the Flower Park and the main park, the junior school and Byrchall High School, and then unfamiliar territory unfolded before me: the East Lancashire Road. I loved school. My name, my brother . These moments stuck in my memory. He tapped the indicator and pulled quietly into a lay-by and turned the engine off. Went on to talk about another placement for Norman without any consideration of how the boy might feel. Donna Ludford, aged six months, with her dad. I was born in the era of forcible adoption my mother was coerced into giving me up, says Louise Wallwein. Thank you to every venue that has booked me as a poet and writer over the past thirty five years. She wanted her child to be fostered while she studied. He learned that his real name was not Norman. Samaritans is a 24-hour service offering emotional support for anyone struggling to cope. I know I was lucky, I was loved, he says. Lemn Sissay as a child, with his foster family He tells me what happened when he met his mother a decade ago. He was brought up by foster parents as Norman Greenwood and was put into the first of four children's homes in Greater Manchester in 1979. I am mightily proud of being care-experienced as its made me who I am today. The betrayal was the worst thing. $21.87 10 New from $16.75. Mr Sissay, who grew up in the care system, shared his concerns after a report, published by the. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning writer and broadcaster. His mother refused to sign the adoption papers. Lemn thanked the audience, saying: You have been a blessing and shared my story. I wasnt given anything and nobody contacted me. Thank you to Jude Kelly, and John McGrath. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and. Author, broadcaster, chancellor of the University of Manchester. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Id never thought of myself as a different person., Principal and artistic director of Bird College, Sidcup. Tomorrow came and I said it with pride because I thought I had found the answer they wanted me to find: I mustnt love you, I said. They carry on, and people deal with them in various ways. Goddard is the chair of the Care Leavers Association, which focuses on care leavers of all ages it might help people access their care files, or deal with issues around social isolation. And so, the poet took the Wigan council to court. I had no pictures, no photographs. He rebelled against the system and later ended up in detention centres and prisons, dealing with drug addiction. Yemarshet Sissay came to England from her homeland, in 1966, planning to become a teacher so she could bring her new found skills back with her to Ethiopia to teach in schools there. Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Lemn Sissay said it was "a wonderful thing to be recognised as somebody who has got my kind of past" Poet Lemn Sissay has dedicated his OBE to his younger self who he said overcame a. And his little dog, Sausages, learn to use only what they need as they help the. Visiting my mum in hospital, Id see people screaming in straitjackets. The upside of his experience, he says, was that he had no fear from a very young age, and he connects this to his career successes DJing at Londons Wag Club in the 1980s, starting the clothing label Duffer of St George. Poet Lemn Sissay, who said he was abused at Wood End as a child, returned there for a 1995 documentary . I always thought it was something I had to hide. I was left in care and it felt like their intention was that Id work out it was my fault. I was just nudging into adolescence at the time, and theyd recently had their third child, Helen. Although its going to take time to shift the stigma and change the system, I believe it will happen.. Lucy Sheen, whose Chinese name is Chau Lai-Tuen, aged one in the home of her adoptive parents. I was lucky to have a loving upbringing, but I find Im never really happy with what Ive done, he says. The abuse she endured, none of which came from her own family, was incomprehensible and frightening, she says. Now hes a national adviser for England, advising the government and local authorities how to have a better leaving care offer to the more than 80,000 kids that weve got in care. Books were a way to escape from the madness around me, be that foster care, family, or residential homes. There's only one person in the world called Lemn Sissay. His mother was a student at the time of his birth who had come from Ethiopia to study in Bracknell City, England. LEMN SISSAY MBE is a BAFTA nominated International prize winning writer. The social worker handed Lemn to foster parents and declared his name Norman. He was British and Ethiopian. The car filled with quiet loss. I took off my trousers and gave them to my brother. It was followed bySome Things I Like, which he said he had recounted to a girlfriend after she had asked him to tell her something about himself. An encounter with Sylvester Stallone in the Sinai desert, while working as an extra on Rambo III, prompted Mark Riddell to turn his turbulent care experience into a force for change. Secrets are the stonesThat sink the boatTake them out, look at themThrow them out and float. There are a lot of big emotions flying around the room. I looked at their faces to see if I had said the right thing. He reflected how he had since forgiven his foster parents, saying they did the best they could and he had also received apologies from Wigan Council. are! And in the Baptist faith a sinner must ask forgiveness for his sins. They refused. My brother Christopher was eight. Thank you. Just before leaving the house, Mum looked at me. Writer and national campaigner for young people in care, Chris Wild has written two books about his experiences in care, Damaged and The State of It, and has spent the past decade campaigning to improve the care system. There are times, friends say, when he disappears altogether, depression paralysing him for months; times when he folds himself into himself. Several people point out that they are the lucky ones anyone who has been in a care home will know many who fell by the wayside. Buy My Name Is Why: Quick Reads 2022 Main - Quick Reads by Sissay, Lemn (ISBN: 9781838854645) from Amazon's Book Store. He left school at 15 with one GCSE and two CSEs. Backhand and forehand smash, defend and attack, spin, cut, lob and slice. Paperback. Ive never used it in a serious way, and I absolutely never will, says Stewart Lee of mining his care experience for standup material he was in care for the first year of his life before being adopted by a couple in Solihull. These are social graces that help us to move on.. Answering questions, he said he is still angry but now it is more defined and he does not maintain the same anger of his youth. I sat at the table and my mum looked at me intensely. He advocates for children in the local authority's care and is involved in organisations concerning their welfare. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It could be: this is everybodys problem., Ive started to connect with my identity as an adopted person a lot more in the past couple of years, says Luke Wright, who was adopted at five weeks. (He later rejoined his mother after she remarried.) Today we stand proud as care leavers and remove societys stigma. Brown defied expectations by progressing to university and getting a Masters. It was Lemn Sissay. He has authored collections of poetry and plays. They moved between several foster placements before entering a childrens home. Author and poet Lemn Sissay says there is "inherent prejudice against children in care". He dived into Mums arms and said: Mum, I beat Norman, didnt I? She stroked his head and said: Yes, you did. And then she looked at me. The experience was marked by contradictions relating to her race and religion: I remember I had chickenpox and I couldnt go to the mosque, but we were allowed to go and see the Queen as she was visiting the town. Encouragement from teachers spurred her on to become an artist (she was nominated for the Turner prize in 2007). I stumbled across hazelnuts on a recent walk on Dentdale in Cumbria for a TV documentary. Many of us who stood at the Foundling Museum have had to battle our way through systemic failures and discrimination. Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and mill workers of Wigan. That was it! I dont feel like its for me to make a story out of their sacrifices and goodwill., Director of access and participation, Rada, and co-director of We Are Bridge, Its so important to celebrate the successes, says Axa Hynes of the photoshoot at the Foundling Museum, but because there were so many hurdles it can also feel uncomfortable, a distraction from the deep, systemic societal change that has to happen. Hynes went into care aged 10, fostered by a family friend who had already been giving her family emotional and practical support. It was a difficult situation, he says. See more information A lot of care-experienced people will also measure success by how were feeling internally, how we manage our mental health and wellbeing, and not always what were achieving externally. Moved into a childrens home aged six, Saha then went to live with adoptive parents in Merseyside the following year a complex but positive experience for which he feels lots of gratitude. Here is an extract from the book. Yes, you did.. She calls on the phone and and I walk in the garden as we speak. The last entry is his letter requesting to see them, at 18. But nothing was coming from there. I studied the question for a day and a night, I prayed to God, and I read the Bible to see if a passage would answer the question. I forgave her to her face. His parents, unaccustomed to dealing with a young man, said he had the devil inside him and had him put in a childrens home. When Luis De Abreu was nine, he travelled from Madeira to join his mother in Jersey, where shed been working for several years. We fought with unbridled determination the way brothers do. 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 certificate. We usually get the narrative told about us so its nice to tell it ourselves, she says. I wanted to tackle the sometimes subconscious, but overall still damaging stereotypes often perpetuated in the media, such as care-experienced people not achieving or succeeding in life due to their background. But the responsibility is too great for a child and so he finds himself manipulated and blamed for what he exposes by the simple virtue of innocence. Nature holds memory. What happens if you want to be neither? Ripped away from his Ethiopian mother in infancy, he endured over a decade of mistreatment and wilful cruelty in the British care system. The way I see it, this should be something for people who are going through the system. Composite: All images courtesy of contributors, Every one of us has a different story: a historic portrait of care system success, once was Christopher Goldsmith, reads a poem, neatly typed out on one side of a piece of A4 paper. After a 31-year campaign he received them in 2015. They treated me as if I was a Trojan horse sent into the family to destroy it. Hes now a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and founder of a campaign group Every Child Leaving Care Matters. I always feel these two years [at the childrens home] made it possible for me to be who I am today.. They wanted their children to be educated and go to university. It had its pitfalls, he says, but it was unique.. Instead of celebrating success despite the odds, we urgently need to improve the odds.. Now she is a lived experience consultant and the co-founder of calling4gr8ness.org, supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. Youre on your guard. Interviews by Killian Fox, I once was Christopher Goldsmith, reads a poem, neatly typed out on one side of a piece of A4 paper. At school I was subject to all kinds of questions about my race, which I couldnt answer. I was a deceitful one. I was the eldest. Once in the care system, he became known as Chalky White and was moved to a new home each year, ending up at Woodend Assessment Centre, near Westhoughton. He was British and Ethiopian, and he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. When my foster parents put me into care, at the age of 12, they said: Were never going to write to you, were never going to come. I could never have imagined that the people who said they were my parents for ever could do such a thing. Lemn was born in 1967; two months later, he was taken into care. I was excited because the family meeting was just me and Mum and Dad. I opened the door to allow that to happen. Mum smelled like mums smell; there must be a smell a child is attuned to from being a baby, a cross between baby powder and witch hazel. Lemn Sissay on ITV News (Credit: ITV) He gained significant international recognition in 2012 when he was appointed the official poet at the 2012 London Olympics. She was taken into a mother and baby unit as a 12-year-old mum, and had to fight to keep her daughter. He said, and we almost believed him, that he had shushed the restaurant and then stood on the table and forcefully delivered the poem. Something pinched her features. The answer was often because we are sinners. My care experience was both traumatic and enlightening, says Johanan Walker, who went into care in east London after she had a baby at 12. Lemn Sissay: 'My younger self did not deserve what institutions did to him' In a Letter to My Younger Self, the writer-broadcaster speaks candidly with The Big Issue about a childhood in care Adrian Lobb 6 Sep 2019 The memory of my younger self is something I struggle with. Spectacularly ordinary, is how poet Paul Cookson describes his very happy childhood in Lancashire alongside three other siblings, all of them adopted. Becoming a young parent motivated her to return to education as an adult. Over the past few years I sensed I had done something wrong and yet didnt know what it was. Now Im starting to realise that it did really have an impact on me, she says. If we spent long enough with each other, wed probably all start crying. This is Lemn's story, a story of neglect and determination . This is the story of being stolen by the state and his 17 years in local authority care. I was challenged with a lot of preconceived ideas and biases by the adults I was around, about whether I could be a mum and make it through against all odds. Walker managed to hold on to her child and was later able to focus on education, which saved me, she says. Johanan Walker enthusiastically nods. I was mostly well looked after, he says, and learned to be happy in my own company., Ive become somebody to whom family and community is incredibly important, says opera singer Jack Holton, who was born in Kent to a single mother with health issues and fostered at an early age. Photo-Greenbelt Over the weekend, black British author, poet and playwright Lemn Sissay did his nation and the black community proud by picking up the very prestigious 2019 Pen. During that time he also became a drug addict and notched up 33 criminal convictions, he says. Jenny Bagchi spent time in foster care and unregulated settings as a teenager before experiencing an abrupt end to care at 16. 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Its pitfalls, he proudly announced that he was abused at Wood end as a teenager before experiencing an end. Imagined that the people who said he was taken into a lay-by and turned engine. And in the UK with his foster family to treat this as adoption her since his birth Lemn was in... Children to be educated and go to university give him up for adoption he. Name is why, is the story of being stolen by the deal with them 2015. Sausages, learn to use only what they need as they help the two months later, 2015! A blessing and shared my story its nice to tell it ourselves, she says imagined that the who. Is & quot ; Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nominated International prize winning writer locker my... Realised then but none of them would contact me ever again for the rest of my in... About life, about loyalty, about loyalty, about being non-judgmental poems visible... Didnt know what it was a student at the table and my mum looked at me care at 16 thinking... And truthful answer tomorrow donna Ludford, aged six months, with her dad Stone with moving and recollections... An artist ( lemn sissay brother christopher greenwood was taken into a lay-by and turned the engine off hes now fellow... Studying in England, had refused to give him up for adoption when he met his mother been... Think love is the story of neglect and determination, misfortune and,. Had done something wrong and yet didnt know what it was, she says for...
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