It was a difficult situation, he says. Its listening to care-experienced young people Ive been working with that has empowered me to talk openly about it., Donna Ludford applied to become lord mayor of the City of Manchester to raise aspirations for young people in the care system. She wanted her child to be fostered while she studied. Buy My Name Is Why By Lemn Sissay. 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. The social worker handed Lemn to foster parents and declared his name Norman. 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. She was taken into a mother and baby unit as a 12-year-old mum, and had to fight to keep her daughter. They wanted me to ask God for forgiveness and through him I will learn to love them. He learned that his real name was not Norman. Its an incredibly common experience. 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. Postscript: After Woodfields, Lemn Sissay was sent to two more childrens homes. My care experience was lifesaving, says Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan, who recently published a memoir called Would It Surprise You to Know?. Why would I think anything else? Mr Sissay detailed his experiences in the British care system in his autobiography of his early life - My Name Is Why. Her care experience in West Yorkshire was reasonably positive, partly because I was just happy to have a home. On the back another poem is handwritten, composed on the train into London this morning, fresh on the page. But dont be fooled, she says. We were very secure in our upbringing. But he did accidentally come across his birth name: Christopher Goldsmith. I looked at their faces to see if I had said the right thing. He said he now tries to put all his energy into projects that help children in care. Backhand and forehand smash, defend and attack, spin, cut, lob and slice. I looked back, but they were turning to go indoors, mindful of the neighbours. show more Product details Format Hardback | 208 pages Dimensions 162 x 220 x 25mm | 422g You just get used to battling with everybody all the time, and you always have your guard up. One of the best things [foster care] has given me is the knowledge that it doesnt need to be a totally typical family setup to work, he says. Lemn Sissay's traumatic childhood has informed much of the work he has created. There are times, friends say, when he disappears altogether, depression paralysing him for months; times when he folds himself into himself. He then secured himself a flat on Poets Corner, a housing estate near Wigan. Instead of celebrating success despite the odds, we urgently need to improve the odds.. 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. Books were a way to escape from the madness around me, be that foster care, family, or residential homes. No brothers and sisters. Theres a sort of stoicism, he says, of how the experience shaped him. They treated me as if I was a Trojan horse sent into the family to destroy it. Samaritans is a 24-hour service offering emotional support for anyone struggling to cope. I showed my love for him by punching him. The University of Manchester Chancellor, poet and playwright, Lemn Sissay, has received his OBE for services to Literature and Charity from HRH Price Charles.Since taking up the Chancellorship in 2015, Lemn Sissay MBE has contributed to the University significantly on a local, national and international scale. 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. If you just want to be? Baker was transracially fostered from 11 days old. And thats all right, but thats the deal. These are the words of Mr Graves, the headteacher in my files, in January 1976, from the social workers report: Spoke to Mr Graves several times on the phone and eventually visited the school. He was British and Ethiopian. Seek and ye shall find. This is what they wanted to seek. It started at The Black Women's Cooperative - The Abasindi Coop - in Moss Side (1984 first paid gig) to todays event at Belfast Book Festival. The documents armed Sissay with the necessary proof that "the government had stolen my childhood.". In two months time they would send me away forever as if I were a stranger. He expected a certain amount of difficulty from the exposure but its not made anything weird at all, he says. I still think love is the most important thing. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. I loved my town. 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. I had no idea Mum thought it was my fault. 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. Lemn means 'why' in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, where celebrated poet Lemn Sissay's mother was from. When Stallone heard Riddells tale of growing up in Aberdeen childrens homes in the early 80s, he urged him to share his story more widely. I brought all these questions home. He learned that his real name was not Norman. I felt incredibly cared for and looked after., When Paolo Hewitt was researching his care memoir, The Looked After Kid, in his early 40s, he went back to Burbank childrens home in Woking, where he lived from 10 to 18, and realised that it was actually a great experience, especially compared with the dismal years in foster care that preceded it. Best known for designing clothes for Diana, Princess of Wales, Bruce Oldfield was born in Durham and fostered at 18 months by a seamstress, Violet Masters, who taught him how to sew. Wallwein, who received an MBE in 2018 for services to spoken word poetry, had been in 13 homes before writing her first play at 17. ISBN-10: 1786892367 . Why - and the search for the answer to why - became the word that defined Lemn . I was excited because the family meeting was just me and Mum and Dad. Ben Ashcroft, the author of a memoir titled Fifty-One Moves, was nearly one of them. I was just nudging into adolescence at the time, and theyd recently had their third child, Helen. Ive collected a lot of names along the way and almost everyone I asked said they would come if they possibly could, he says. They include Olympic medallist Kriss Akabusi; novelist Jeanette Winterson; the comedian and Observer columnist Stewart Lee, and the Turner prize-nominated photographer and film-maker Zarina Bhimji. 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. ISBN: 9781786892362. Here is an extract from the book. Lemn Sissay. Thats all I knew. . 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. And so, the poet took the Wigan council to court. My home situation was dire. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and. 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. 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. He recalled how becoming 12 years old, he started to develop into an adolescent and told the odd lie and stayed out late occasionally. 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.--This text refers to the audioCD edition. Riordan was in respite care several times during his first four years. Sometimes, if youve had my childhood, you try not to be defined by it, he says. If youd asked me as a child, Id be like, Oh, Im adopted but its not a thing. Now he acknowledges that there is probably some degree of separation anxiety as a result of not being with my mother in those crucial first few weeks. Its a mixture of stigma and admiration, says Martin Figura of attitudes towards people in care. Lemn told how in 1967 his mother, aged 21 and unaware that she was pregnant, left Ethiopia to study in England. But success is not about being the lord mayor, she told a group of care leavers recently. He asked me to yelp so it sounded like I was being punished. I was born in the era of forcible adoption my mother was coerced into giving me up, says Louise Wallwein. Healing can hurt too. Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and mill workers of Wigan. I had no pictures, no photographs. 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. 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. All I knew was that my birth mother, the woman who had my face and my blood, was from Africa and Africa was where poor people were. And it gave me comfort to see your views on forgiveness and forgetting, for whilst I can see the psychological argument in favour of forgiveness, I stand with the words of a Holocaust survivor, 'There is no such thing as closure; it is a word invented by people who . Went on to talk about another placement for Norman without any consideration of how the boy might feel. We want you to spend the next day thinking about love and what it is. I had no one. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning writer and broadcaster. His mother, on arriving in the UK, asked for him to be temporarily fostered as she needed to study; she would not sign papers allowing him to be adopted. My body will skip around the table like a sprite on the solid stone floor. I remember the smell of wet heather, bracken and fern. It was the end of December 1979 and I was excited when I entered the front room for the family meeting. 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. Catherine and David had no children when they took me. 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. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature by The Queen of England, The Pen Pinter Prize and a Points of Light Award from The Prime Minister. As depicted in Steve McQueens TV series Small Axe, he was sent to live in Brixton, where his involvement in the 1981 uprisings led to his incarceration aged 18. 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 just have to keep mentally strong and reverse those doubts., Participation and projects lead at Pure Insight and business owner, Natalie Hirst spent eight years living in foster care in Greater Manchester and had a mixed experience, but her resilience helped her to develop the strength and skills to overcome many challenges. It was actually seeing Lemn [Sissay] perform that helped me realise that you could talk about it. I loved life. None of it. I had no idea what he meant. I hadnt realised then but none of them would contact me ever again for the rest of my life. Pool was adopted from an Eritrean orphanage and lived in Sudan and Norway before coming to the UK aged six. CERI - Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Ceremony of Carols Brings Light on a Dark December Evening, Local Primaries Compete in Maths Challenge, Cross Country Teams Crowned Town Champions, Girls Win Club Stage of Utilita Girls' Cup, 50th Tillotson Lecture Focuses on Biotechnology Revolution, Harriet is Swim Englands Breakthrough Athlete of the Year, Girls Lay Wreath During Armistice Assembly, Lacrosse Team Wins Northern Schools Tournament, One-Day Film School Develops a Range of Skills, Prize-giving Celebrates Outstanding Achievements. After a 31-year campaign he received them in 2015. I was in care. He didnt disclose his own experience to anyone at university until he co-founded a participatory research project called The Verbatim Formula in 2015. A social worker placed Lemn with white Christian foster parents, David and Catherine Greenwood, who lived in Ashton-in-Makerfield. Now she is a lived experience consultant and the co-founder of calling4gr8ness.org, supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. One dual carriageway, with a single destination: Woodfields. 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. To help others like her, Button has co-founded calling4gr8ness.org, a programme supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. I always feel these two years [at the childrens home] made it possible for me to be who I am today.. He has been with this family since he was a couple of months old and Mrs Greenwood considers him as theirs. But I will ask God for forgiveness and learn to love you. This was the perfect answer. Theyd come down to see us and say hi. The level of invisibility of the issues facing young people leaving care has not fundamentally altered in the past 20 years., Theres still a very clear judgment passed when people hear you say, I was in care, says Akiya Henry. His mother, a young Ethiopian studying in England, had refused to give him up for adoption when he was born in 1967. His own inspiration in poetry has come from ColeridgesRime of the Ancient Mariner. I was always falling uphill, he says. It must be true. Im out here, on my own, doing the best I can, with the very little that any family member is going to offer me. The installation, Superman Is a Foundling, is another of Sissays initiatives, drawing attention to the ubiquity of the orphan in popular culture, and it momentarily shocks the poet and performer Luke Wright to find his own history reflected in a literary trope. Its never really been something that had a lasting effect on me., CEO of Adoptee Futures and critical adoption studies researcher, I was fostered till the age of one and then placed with my adoptive family, says Annalisa Toccara. 31 December 1979: Message left after Christmas saying that the Greenwoods wanted Norman removed without further notice. Social workers report, 31 December 1979: Spoke to foster parents on telephone. Author, broadcaster, chancellor of the University of Manchester. Hes now a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and founder of a campaign group Every Child Leaving Care Matters. Lemn Sissay reads from his new collection, Gold From the Stone, at Musicport festival in Whitby, 21-23 October, The poet talks about how his foster parents put him into care at the age of 12 and left him there, and finding his birth mother, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Lemn Sissay They treated me as if I was a Trojan horse sent into the family to destroy it., Lemn Sissay: My foster parents were good people who did bad things. "I found out about your past and then I heard you on Desert Island Discs," Lisa told Lemn . 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 advocates for children in the local authority's care and is involved in organisations concerning their welfare. Norman Mills, my new social worker, waited at the gate. Mrs Greenwood does not think of the boy as a foster child. Over the next few weeks the childrens home filled up with mainly teenagers. At the time, I looked exactly like my father and was the same age as he was when I was conceived. I carried a lot of anger for many years and then I realised that the anger is one of the things that kills people. Mum had always said that love was never in question. Though it was clear she loved and cared for us, my foster mum used to beat us with a cane. He has been made an Honorary Doctor by the universities of Manchester, Kent, Essex, Huddersfield and Brunel, and in 2019 . Ive put a great amount of my own time back into trying to improve things for other people., It destroys you as a person, the amount of anxiety you develop from always expecting something to go wrong in your life, says Tarell Mcintosh, who became homeless after two local authorities in south London failed to properly care for him. 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. Youre on your guard. These experiences have shaped who I am today, an independent woman, passionate about my career and working with local authorities in Greater Manchester to ensure every young person has a voice, choice and control over decisions made about them., Psychodynamic psychotherapist and director of Integrated Minds and Artists on the Couch. Now my mindset is slightly different. It was only recently that one of her brothers acknowledged what shed gone through and apologised for failing to confront it. The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable and the answer as honest as a sinner could get. He loved his parents, he says, but at the time there were no black kids around. Then it was time for a love poem, which he believes is read at a wedding at least every two weeks and is available for free online:Invisible Kisses. Now, as he approaches his 55th birthday, he's added another: children's writer. Not even a Bible. Lightening the mood with the short, punchySarcasmhe recalled how he wrote it in his Batman boxer shorts outside the backdoor of his house, his girlfriend having thrown him out after a row! We usually get the narrative told about us so its nice to tell it ourselves, she says. When Luis De Abreu was nine, he travelled from Madeira to join his mother in Jersey, where shed been working for several years. Opening the evening with the epicMorning Breaks, he immediately pitched the listeners into a tale of the narrator clinging onto a branch for years before choosing to finally let go, having, throughout all his time in suspension, grown wings which enabled him to take flight. 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. Now he works as a theatre-maker working with young and emerging artists, many of whom are also care-experienced. The way I see it, this should be something for people who are going through the system. "I spend all day in bed today," he once wrote plaintively on his blog. At the age of 17, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his Birth Certificate. On the back another poem is handwritten, composed on the train into London this morning, fresh on the page. I was 10 and we were off to a wedding in our new clothes. What kept us stable is that we knew we had two mums and dads.. They were in the trunk back at home. 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. It had its pitfalls, he says, but it was unique.. He really put it on the map and allowed it to be something that we could be proud of as an identity and talk about as a political thing. Mum told me they will never visit me because it is my choice to leave them because I didnt love them. He was British and Ethiopian, and he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. He was badly bullied at school and his education suffered terribly, but he soldiered on and enrolled at Bird College aged 22 to study dance and musical theatre. I loved him. It was the sense of an underlining unkindness that stayed with me. That was it! Alex Wheatle grew up in care in the notorious Shirley Oaks childrens home in Croydon a very lonely existence, he says. This was the beginning of empty Christmas time and hollow birthdays. Lemn Sissay is a poet, author and broadcaster who was the official poet of the London Olympics in 2012. I took off my trousers and gave them to my brother. This led me to the answer I thought they wanted me to get to. Natalie Hirst, right, with a girl she met while visiting her grandmother at her caravan site. At 12, Norman was sent away to childrens homes. She looked at me as if I had wounded her. Adopted as a baby, Jeanette Winterson grew up in a strict Pentecostalist family in Lancashire. I know so many care-experienced people whove had that further experience of being homeless, being a rough sleeper, living in hostels, sofa-surfing, all that kind of stuff.. This is the story of being stolen by the state and his 17 years in local authority care. 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. 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. In the Baptist church, our church, we were taught to question why. LEMN SISSAY MBE is a BAFTA nominated International prize winning writer. His mother couldn't cope with him and his brother so they were put into the care of . 4 October 1979: The Greenwoods are seen by Norman as his parents, and they and their natural children meet his needs in every way. Social workers report. I was a deceitful one. When he was four, Kriss Akabusis parents returned to Nigeria, leaving him alone in the UK with his younger brother. 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. In and out of care from the age of five, Stanley J Browne says his horror story began aged eight, when he was separated from his siblings and fostered off to Nottingham. This was the beginning of not being touched. Other weird things started to happen. Mum and Dad must have told everyone in my family to stay away from me. 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. I used to let Christopher win at things, because he would get really upset when he didnt win, so I would play the wall and then let the ball go, and say to the wall: 15 love, to you. There was always a decision as I got to the end of the game with the wall, about whether Id let him win or not. Born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Lemn Sissay was placed in foster care as a baby, and sent aged 12 to the first of a series of childrens homes. They were an aspirational middle-class family from Lancashire. It made me aware that families all look different and thats absolutely fine., Carl Parsons was adopted at five weeks. Jenny Bagchi spent time in foster care and unregulated settings as a teenager before experiencing an abrupt end to care at 16. It was Lemn Sissay. Its taken a lot of years to reflect back to my foster parents what they did to me. His love will shine through me and them. Thered be many times in the future that I would play table tennis with myself by pushing the table against the wall. Thank you to Jude Kelly, and John McGrath. 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. Born in London, Henry was privately fostered at six months by a wonderful couple in Weston-super-Mare who encouraged her dreams of becoming an actor shes currently starring in Mad House in the West End. 0 likes. Ive had experiences with homelessness, she says, and its something that disproportionately affects people who are leaving foster care. I had teachers who put me in a box once they knew my background and said, Youll end up doing no good. Reynolds, who contributed to her mother Margarets 2021 book about adoption, The Wild Track, now studies ancient history and social anthropology at St Andrews and is involved in activist groups. My choice to leave them because I was conceived the era of forcible adoption mother! A theatre-maker working with young and emerging artists, many of whom are also.. Handwritten, composed on the back another poem is handwritten, composed on the page declared! They had made this call to the miners and mill workers of Wigan detailed his in... And broadcaster who was the sense of an underlining unkindness that stayed with me who! Looked back, but it was actually seeing lemn [ Sissay ] perform that helped realise. 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