Lemn Sissay arrives at the Shoreditch club, where we have arranged to meet, late, apologetic and exuberantly present, with a warmth that makes me feel, straight away – although I have not met him before – as if he were a friend. And, as we go up in the lift, I reflect that he has every reason to feel on a high. Gold from the Stone, a tremendous selection of his poetry “from age 16 to now” (he is 49) is about to be published. The night before our meeting, he was presenting a prom at the Albert Hall, in front of 6,000 people. Last year, he beat Peter Mandelson to be elected Chancellor of Manchester University. And this is a man who spent his teens in care – and left school at 15 with one GCSE and two CSEs. He has performed to FA Cup fans. He was poet of the 2012 Olympics. He has had his poems sculpted in granite and built on concrete. He has an MBE for services to literature. He has launched poetry projects for care-leavers. His gift as a writer – of plays, poetry, documentaries – is for turning life’s base metal into gold. The list goes on… but the lift’s doors are opening.
Taking on a black baby was, he believes, for his foster parents, an act of advanced Christian charity
Soon I’ll be performing in New York, a few hundred yards from where my mum lives in Manhattan. I’d love her to come
I almost wish he would give less of himself away. He is one of the most unguarded people I have ever met
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