My Muse Radio 4
Poet and playwright Lemn Sissay grew up not even knowing his own name.
In My Muse, he describes a very painful childhood. He was the child of Ethiopian parents and was fostered from an early age.
He was even given another name, Norman.
However, at the age of 12, his foster parents put him into care. In those dark dark days, he was lost. That’s when Bob Marley and his music came into play.
“I had no-one, not even my own name... I grew my dreadlocks and something inside me grew,” he said.
He tells his story without a hint of self pity – the reality sounds dire.
Here he was, growing up in children’s homes, a black boy who didn’t know any black people.
Years later, he was given letters written by his mother pleading to have her baby back.
In the letters she was writing to the social worker who managed his adoption. His name was Norman.
“He’d named me after himself,” said Lemn, even on the radio, you can see eyes roll.
But this was a magical tale of Lemn and of Bob Marley – it had soul and beautiful music – both of them are poets at heart.
“He lived by his words, I live by mine,” said Lemn.
“Poems were the only air I could breathe. I listened to Bob Marley.”
Lemn quoted Bob: “If you are a big tree; I am the small axe.”
For Lemn, Marley crosses all boundaries. He speaks to everyone, whatever colour they are. His message is self empowerment and reggae.
On his radio odyssey, Lemn meets people who knew and wrote about Bob.
But at the heart of it is his own deep admiration and love for his a true muse – the man, he said, who inspired that sense of urgency – “What must be written, must be written.”
