Lemn Sissay: My Name is Why

How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how.
My Name is Why is the story of Lemn Sissay: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and ultimately triumph.

Awarded the 2024 Hay Medal for Poetry, Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL is a playwright, memoirist, performer and broadcaster. His autobiography My Name is Why was a Number One Sunday Times Best Seller.
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. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.

Suffolk High Sheriff, Gulshan Kayembe invites Lemn back to Suffolk for this very special evening. This unique event is an opportunity to hear Lemn’s reflections on a childhood spent in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in so doing inform our own understanding of the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home.

Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation’s best-loved poets, this moving account is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity. In 2022 Lemn was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. In September 2024 he was made honorary fellow of Mansfield College Oxford and in 2020 he became Honorary Fellow at Jesus College Cambridge. Lemn was named MBE for services to literature, awarded by The Queen at Buckingham Palace and then he was named OBE for services to Literature and Charity, awarded by King Charles at Windsor Castle in 2023. Lemn was Chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 to 2023.

‘His name is magic, his poems are songs on the street’ – Independent

The event will be followed by a Q&A with the audience and a book signing.