Lemn Sissay

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is Lem Sissy, writer, playwright, and poet. His skill with language has brought him an MBE to doctorates and fans around the world, including Desmond Tutu. The significance of words revealed themselves early in his life. At seventeen, he was given two bits of paper, and what he read was to change everything. One was a letter from his birth mother, written the year after he was fostered, and pleading for his return. The second was his birth certificate showing his real name, not the one he'd answered to for the first seventeen years of his life. Much of his writing has been born out of his personal odyssey to trace his lost family, make sense of an often brutalising care system, and curate the fragments of his fractured beginnings. Yet those highly personal themes reach out far beyond his individual experiences, to highlight the universal nature of rejection, loss, dislocation, and healing. In Creativity, he says, I saw light, the place where anger was an expression in the search of love, where dysfunction is a true reaction to untruth. And how many interesting words there are in that quote, Lam Sissy. I want to begin, though, with the fact that you were the first poet commissioned to write for the London 2012 Olympics. What was it you were trying to say?

Lemn Sissay1:55

I had to look at the Olympic site and uh find a poem.

Lemn Sissay2:01

There's a poem in there somewhere waiting for me.

Lemn Sissay2:04

So you have to kind of excavate until it it you you find that seam of gold.

Lemn Sissay2:12

And there was a matchmaking factory that used to be there. It was run by women.

Lemn Sissay2:18

They went on strike and I found an article by a woman called Annie Besant.

Lemn Sissay2:28

who took on the struggle of these working class women.

Presenter2:31

You know, I interviewed Noel Gallacher recently on Desert Island Discs, and he said exactly the same thing about writing a song. He said, They're out there and I just wait to see if I can catch it in my net. Is are you talking about the same sensation?

Lemn Sissay2:45

It is the same effect. It's like sculpture, okay? That the head is already in the block of rock.

Lemn Sissay2:53

All you've got to do is take away the rock, and the better your tools are, the more defined you'll be at finding the face.

Presenter3:00

You've described your head as being in London, your heart in Manchester, and your soul in Addis Ababa. Well, apart from being very poetic and beautiful, just explain a little of that, if you would.

Lemn Sissay3:11

I'm not from anywhere. You know, I was brought up in a village in Lancashire. I er I found my family in Ethiopia. I came to Manchester where I was accepted, but I was from somewhere else. I wasn't like a black guy.

Lemn Sissay3:25

In Manchester in Mosside. Whatever that is, in in all of its multiplicity, but I wasn't that, I was from Lancashire. I had meat pies, I grew up with meat pies.

Lemn Sissay3:34

didn't know a black person properly till I was sixteen. And by saying I know a black person I mean go into somebody's house and have dinner with them.

Presenter3:39

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay3:41

So I've always been an outsider, which gives me a bridge to everybody because we're all outsiders.

Presenter3:48

Of course we've got to fit in the music. Just just tell me about this. What are we going to hear?

Lemn Sissay3:52

This is called Taitu, and it's performed by Aster Aweke, who was the first Ethiopian singer that I heard, and it's an inspiring piece of music about the empowerment of women in Ethiopia.

Speaker 44:15

I'll jump back to my door.

Speaker 44:19

Ah.

Speaker 44:19

Are you gonna know?

Speaker 44:22

I check my nine to

Speaker 44:33

Yajnaruj nengya tai tofrey, ya kurta kambila sni madlanzari. Maj pari nangina, budahara ralo. Kasaputrasalo, kalna ouna.

Presenter4:43

Ty Too by Yenya featuring Asta Awaker.

Presenter4:46

So, L'Am Cussy, you are shortly going to be installed as Chancellor of Manchester University. You beat Lord Mandelson to that elected post. How have you yourself done most of your learning? I mean, are you are you self taught in all things? Are you somebody who is constantly absorbing whatever they are and whatever they're doing?

Lemn Sissay5:04

I don't know how I learned. I didn't go to university. I didn't go to college.

Lemn Sissay5:09

You just leave the children's homes, that's how it was when I was in care.

Lemn Sissay5:13

Nobody sugges nobody suggested that I should go to university. Nobody had those aspirations for me. So, uh, I did the best I could with what I've got, you know, and I've I was always a sparky, intelligent child. I was dying to soak in everything.

Presenter5:34

Yeah. You set up something called Culture World, and that's the first writing workshop for black writers in Manchester.

Lemn Sissay5:36

Let's run that.

Lemn Sissay5:40

That's right. It's it's not rocket science. There are lots of people who don't get opportunities because they're not served by um society and they deserve to be. But the thing is, is uh poetry can serve a person just by being written and read at a funeral or at a wedding or at the birth of a child.

Presenter6:01

Why do you think people go to poetry at those times?

Lemn Sissay6:04

Actually, poetry is around people a lot more than those times. Poetry has a bridge between the spiritual and the physical, and that's why it's in the Bible, that's why it's in the Quran, that's why the Buddhist faith uses it. So, when you feel a desperate need for that bridge at a wedding, at a funeral, when you're leaving work after 25 years, you know, there's always somebody who's right, right, I've got a poem for you, John. All right, okay. And it's a funny poem, but it's kind of poignant.

Lemn Sissay6:31

It's a beautiful thing to see a poem read at uh a funeral or a wedding. And if you go round graveyards you find poems are the last thing that people leave to them. Why is that? It's because poetry is the bridge between now and then, the past and the future. It's an incredibly powerful thing and it is around us all the time. Often it's not great poetry, so I I will go round the graveyard with a little chisel just to

Lemn Sissay6:56

You know, just to edit.

Presenter6:56

Just to edit.

Lemn Sissay6:58

A little editing.

Presenter6:59

Listeners, he's joking. It's time for your second disc of the morning then. Tell me what we're going to hear now.

Lemn Sissay7:05

Oh wow We are going to hear says by Nils Fram, who is a pianist from Germany This will lift up the sun at sunrise and this will lower it at sunset This will throw up the stars at midnight.

Presenter8:00

That was Niels Fram playing Says. So, Lam Sisse, your mother came to Britain in the mid sixties, 1966. She was coming to study. She was one of that first generation of women who were travelling abroad to be educated as part of Emperor Haile Selassie's education programme, as it was then. She then discovered she was pregnant, and the college she was at sent her to a mother and baby home, and she agreed to have her young baby fostered.

Lemn Sissay8:26

She wanted me fostered because she was studying, and there was a practice in the mother and baby homes where the nuns would look after the women and also make them feel slightly guilty, not even slightly guilty, extremely guilty about the situation they were in. They would link with the social workers. The social worker then press gangs the woman to sign the adoption papers. That's what this is about. It's about getting that signature. Once the adoption papers are signed, the child is adopted. The social worker may say to the woman, you know, yeah, you go back to your family and then we'll sort out you seeing your child once a year or what have you. She never got a chance to see them. The social worker gave me to foster parents and he said, treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever.

Lemn Sissay9:13

Okay, we'll get her to sign the adoption papers.

Lemn Sissay9:17

This is about the traumatisation of women who are just on the edge on the bridge between childhood and adulthood themselves, and my mother refused to sign the adoption papers.

Presenter9:29

So for eleven years you were Norman Greenwood. I'm longer.

Lemn Sissay9:32

Longer.

Presenter9:36

About your earliest memories of home life. How did your technically foster parents, in practice, adoptive parents? My mum and dad, my mum and dad. Tell me about those early years with mum and dad.

Lemn Sissay9:43

My mom and dad.

Lemn Sissay9:47

Ellie years with mum and dad were going to church, oh hot summers, sticky tarmac rose, the flower park across the road from us, oh and magical summers and Easters in Scotland, because we were half Scottish and my granddad was Duncan Munro and he wore a flat cap and he loved me to bits.

Presenter10:13

There there is so much that you have had to make sense of in your life. But at the time, were you a happy little boy having a good life?

Lemn Sissay10:22

I was so happy. Like, I thought the world smiled.

Lemn Sissay10:29

Just smiled. Everybody in the world smiled.

Lemn Sissay10:33

Uh and I didn't realize that it was me smiling at the world smiling back at me.

Lemn Sissay10:39

And it was just like this great rhythm, this great bounce between me and the world.

Lemn Sissay10:47

I loved having a family.

Lemn Sissay10:50

I really, really loved it. My aunts and my uncles and my cousins and my grandma and granddad and

Lemn Sissay10:56

The smell of my grandma's house

Lemn Sissay10:59

And then we would all go to Scotland on en masse.

Presenter11:04

So tell me then about what we're going to hear now.

Lemn Sissay11:07

Well, what we're hearing now is Amazing Grace by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

Lemn Sissay11:14

I l I love Scotland. When I'm in London or in Manchester and I've got the roof down, it's just a little Peugeot, but I've got the roof down, I will play Amazing Grace like so loud. It's not hip hop.

Lemn Sissay11:27

But it rocks me.

Presenter12:18

That was part of Amazing Grace played there by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard. So, Lam Susse, um, by the late seventies you're technically your foster family, but really your adopted family, who you'd been totally absorbed into, had three children that they had given birth to.

Presenter12:34

And they wanted you to leave.

Lemn Sissay12:37

Yes.

Lemn Sissay12:38

I was uh twelve years of age. I was right on the edge of adolescence. Because I was the oldest one, they'd not had an adolescent before.

Lemn Sissay12:50

So uh so when I was staying out late with my friends and uh or uh doing what adolescents do, taking biscuits from the tin without saying please and thank you comes to mind. Um

Presenter13:01

Didn't know.

Lemn Sissay13:03

Um

Lemn Sissay13:04

Uh

Lemn Sissay13:06

There was all kinds of interpretations as to what was wrong with me. And um yeah, and they um they they basically uh put me into into care, into children's arms, and said that they would never write to me or contact me again.

Lemn Sissay13:25

That was explicit in this deal.

Presenter13:30

I'm scarcely able to get a handle on where to begin on this.

Presenter13:36

What I will ask you is the response of the adults around you in the care home. How did they explain what was happening to you?

Lemn Sissay13:44

Okay, so I have just got my files after wanting them for twenty five years. Um so I'm starting to see what what was going on and uh it's clear in the files that the foster parents were they they they blamed me for um

Lemn Sissay14:06

Basically

Lemn Sissay14:09

Let me say this calmly. Basically, I was a threat within the family. I was like a Trojan horse. Um the devil was working inside of me. Um we were extremely religious.

Presenter14:22

What do you make of your adoptive parents' decision now?

Lemn Sissay14:29

Um I uh

Lemn Sissay14:32

I reserve the right to be emotional about what happened to me.

Lemn Sissay14:37

You know, I reserve the right to feel.

Lemn Sissay14:40

You know, you have to remember that throughout my adult life

Lemn Sissay14:43

Moment I left children's homes.

Lemn Sissay14:45

I was not going to hide my story because otherwise I'd go crazy.

Lemn Sissay14:53

Um but I totally forgive uh my f foster mother and and father and and entire family.

Presenter15:03

How do you manage that?

Lemn Sissay15:06

I

Lemn Sissay15:09

Because of what they did to me I refused to believe in any higher power.

Lemn Sissay15:15

And now I do believe that there is a God uh greater than my understanding.

Lemn Sissay15:24

And I have to trust that. And in and in trusting that, I can forgive.

Presenter15:31

I want to talk to you about how it was you began to articulate your story, but of course we must fit in the music a little bit. So let us hear your fourth track of the morning.

Lemn Sissay15:37

So let us

Lemn Sissay15:42

I do a thing with Care Leavers, Kids in Care, where I I do a series of workshops and they write poetry.

Lemn Sissay15:50

And I find a a space like this, and then put lots of string from one side of the wall to another. And then I hang the poems from the string all over the the room.

Lemn Sissay16:02

And we close the door and it's pitch black.

Lemn Sissay16:06

And we play this music.

Lemn Sissay16:08

Garaki Symphony number three.

Lemn Sissay16:11

And one person is lowed into the gallery at a time with a torch.

Lemn Sissay16:17

If you want to know how young people in care feel, it's not through an evaluation form. It's not through a system of committees. Get them to write poetry.

Presenter17:30

That was part of the second movement of Gorecky's Symphony No. three, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, performed there by the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra of Katowice, conducted by Jerszi Katelwicz. So, uh, Lem Sisse, let's talk a little then about when you started to write poetry and

Presenter17:46

It became, you once said, your closest friend, closer to me than family ever was. I'm wondering.

Presenter17:53

a lot about how that happened, because for many distressed and disorientated teenagers in the care system, they find solace in alcohol, they find solace in drugs, they find solace in self-harming. Not many of them find solace in poetry. How did that happen to you?

Lemn Sissay18:11

Well I've done, you know, I've I was in care with those kids. I have I'll show you, you know, I have those tattoos. Fortunately I'm black so you can't see them. The ones where you sell for that. I have yeah, a cross here which we did with Indian Ink and and thing. I have D A there which is my first girlfriend and you're showing me your arm now. Yeah.

Presenter18:21

The ones where you self-data have.

Presenter18:29

You're showing me your arm that you're doing.

Lemn Sissay18:31

And this was self-harm, you know.

Lemn Sissay18:34

Stabbing her.

Lemn Sissay18:36

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay18:38

blunt needle into into your arm, you know, to to write things that'll be there forever.

Presenter18:43

You said a very learned thing about poetry once. You said poetry is the voice at the back of the mind, and WH Orden said something very similar. The idea that what you are doing with poetry, when it is effective, is you are articulating with words feelings that people cannot quite grasp and name themselves.

Presenter19:06

How did you get to that piece of learning?

Lemn Sissay19:10

That's just a very beautiful description that you've just given.

Lemn Sissay19:17

Um, because poets are translators of the spirit and we feel a need to do that.

Presenter19:25

And that's always just been in you.

Lemn Sissay19:27

Yeah, I knew I was a poet when I was uh thirteen. I've made uh I made a B B C radio documentary where I went back to the children's homes and the cleaner said, There you were in the corner, writing away with your pen, scrumpling up your paper and throwing it out.

Lemn Sissay19:42

Do you know what I mean? So I needed that verification, by the way. I needed to know that that's what I did when I was a child. To be able to write something that nobody had ever s seen before for me was

Lemn Sissay19:55

Proof that I was alive and

Lemn Sissay20:00

I can look back at my poems and I can go, I was alive then. My books, I can say, oh, that's what I did think then. Because I didn't have any family to tell me what, to argue with me about what I thought. And of course, ideas that are.

Presenter20:11

And our families, of course, are our sounding boards of who we are and when we are and when we did that and why we didn't do that and those photographs tell you that you hear your uncle telling you this story again. Those are our sounding boards. That's right. So words became yours and the pages you wrote on paper. Absolutely. The care system waved you goodbye at 17. You moved into a flat and you self-published your first book of poetry, Perceptions of the Pen, while you were on the dole round about that age.

Lemn Sissay20:17

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay20:21

I swear.

Lemn Sissay20:24

Absolutely.

Presenter20:37

Where did you get the money, and where on earth did you get the confidence?

Lemn Sissay20:41

The money was from the dole money and then I printed perceptions of the pen in a A5 leaflet, you know, that was stapled in the middle. And I paid a guy called Stephen Hall from Atherton, who had a printer. You know, I paid him on a weekly basis, so it took a while to pay for it. And I sold them for £2.95. And I sold them. I mean, God love Lancashire, man. I sold them to striking miners and their families. And they bought my book. I sold out and then I printed some more. I mean, it meant so much. And I came to Manchester with that.

Presenter20:56

And I'll pay

Lemn Sissay21:17

And

Lemn Sissay21:18

I knew that as I got any quote success in poetry, which is a bit of an oxymoron, but still, I would use those resources to find my family.

Presenter21:27

And there's so much more to tell, but for now, tell me about this.

Lemn Sissay21:30

Okay. So I found my mother. Uh she's from Ethiopia, but she was working for the United Nations in the Gambia. She had to flee Ethiopia after the revolution in 1974. I know all the story'cause I've researched it.

Lemn Sissay21:46

But when I found my mother.

Lemn Sissay21:49

I looked like the last time she saw.

Lemn Sissay21:54

My father.

Lemn Sissay21:57

Often when you find your parent, if you're an adopted child, you forget that you're actually the embodiment of the man who impregnated the woman.

Lemn Sissay22:09

And you're the same age.

Lemn Sissay22:12

So you actually look like him.

Lemn Sissay22:16

So so when I saw my mum, I didn't realize that she saw all of this when she saw me.

Lemn Sissay22:25

And when I've met my mum, I realized that it wasn't my story. I thought it was all about me, you know. Mother, I've come home, you know.

Lemn Sissay22:34

You know the first thing most people think when they find their family, they're like, I don't want anything from you, don't worry, you know.

Lemn Sissay22:39

I take that, you know. I'm like, Mum, I don't want anything from you. I just want you to see me.

Lemn Sissay22:44

I just want to see you. Don't worry. Don't worry about me.

Lemn Sissay22:48

Mazen. So every word of this song

Lemn Sissay22:56

is is from me to her when I was twenty one in the Gambia alone, having spent every bit of my resources from all of this poetry. And I I used to lie on the beach all day and

Lemn Sissay23:09

Because she was at work and trying to avoid me.

Speaker 423:13

Gold is the colour of crystal, the snowlight that falls from the heavenly sky.

Speaker 423:25

Catch me and let me dive under, for I want to swim in the pools of your eyes.

Presenter23:47

That was Annie Lennox and Cold and Chosen Len Sussex, as you explained going into that, because at the moment when you did finally trace your mother using all the resources that you have, it was a a complex and difficult exchange between the two of you. Let's talk a little then about your father. It was 1995, I think, when you made a documentary with the BBC about your efforts to trace your father.

Presenter24:10

You did indeed discover that he had had died in nineteen seventy four.

Lemn Sissay24:15

I didn't know him, so I was like, well, you know, been through a bit up to now.

Lemn Sissay24:21

kinda can possibly cope with not having the father there. But what he did leave was a very powerful presence in the eyes of everybody who'd ever met him, including my mother, and I was that presence.

Presenter24:38

Was he a charismatic person?

Lemn Sissay24:40

He was very charismatic.

Presenter24:41

Was he very good-looking?

Lemn Sissay24:42

He was very good looking.

Presenter24:44

Was he very abollient?

Lemn Sissay24:45

He was a bullion.

Presenter24:46

Did he hold the centre of a room?

Lemn Sissay24:48

He did hope.

Presenter24:49

Hold the centre of a room. So the f you're your father's son in every sense? I am my father's son. There we are. Right, okay. Um, what about meeting your extended family?

Lemn Sissay24:52

I'm a fan of the five.

Presenter25:00

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay25:00

Uh I I not

Lemn Sissay25:02

Not many people in my life say so you're your father's son, just so you know, you you're saying that to me in the interview, but you know I don't hear that.

Lemn Sissay25:13

Because I don't have family.

Presenter25:14

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay25:17

So it's kinda nice and very

Lemn Sissay25:20

Discombobulating.

Presenter25:21

Okay.

Lemn Sissay25:21

Okay. When you hear it in a good way. You know, I'm not uh

Lemn Sissay25:25

Falling down some hole of self here.

Presenter25:28

Well you can. It's desert island discs that's what you do.

Lemn Sissay25:29

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay25:31

I I even forgot I was on a desert island. Oh my gosh. But you were there was a question. Whenever a child comes back to find their family.

Lemn Sissay25:42

in such a way as I did.

Lemn Sissay25:45

You bring yourself to a hall of secrets.

Lemn Sissay25:51

And what you have is the magic dust that as you throw it into that hole, the truth becomes apparent.

Lemn Sissay26:00

So in other words

Lemn Sissay26:03

Finding your family, as I did, makes you a threat to all of the stories that that family has built between themselves that says this is us, let's not talk about the war.

Lemn Sissay26:18

You bring war into a family.

Lemn Sissay26:21

But you know

Lemn Sissay26:23

You bring peace, great peace.

Lemn Sissay26:26

Through that.

Lemn Sissay26:30

I hope I'm not being uh cryptic, but I I think I possibly am.

Presenter26:34

Well, you're you're a poet, and what you're doing is you're illuminating it through a very brilliantly descriptive use of language.

Lemn Sissay26:42

Yesterday I described somebody said, I've got to get out. I said, I know, you've got to get out like penguins in a hot tub.

Presenter26:49

What is that? What is that? That's the title of your next book. That's what that is. Right. Time for some more music then, Lem Sissi. Tell me about this.

Lemn Sissay26:51

That's the title of

Lemn Sissay26:58

Oh, this is Aretha Franklin and this is about black America. Um I think it's the equivalent of classical music to to to the European, the soul music to the black American is is of similar depth and breadth. So then you get to the lyrics of this and um it's beautiful.

Speaker 427:20

Hello.

Speaker 427:30

Oh water.

Speaker 427:47

I will lay me down.

Presenter27:52

That was Aretha Franklin with Bridge Over Troubled Waters. So, Lam Sissy, your poetry then has brought you worldwide recognition.

Presenter27:59

It's seen you share stages with very eminent people, with world leaders, and yet it is so much born out of your own incredibly difficult life and much that you have had to endure and deal with. Is there a contradiction in that?

Lemn Sissay28:17

I don't think that as an artist you need to have a terrible story. If you're lucky enough to have sparked your creative self, you've been given a gift from God. And we've all got that, by the way. Do you really think we've all got it? Oh, God, yeah. You know, um, if a mother is managing how to get an idea over to their child, they are being creative.

Lemn Sissay28:42

You know, when a child says, you know, uh, the sun in the sky is like a bead on a blanket or, you know, this this this Twitter thing that's going round at the moment of a kid who came home with a piece of black paper and said, Dad, I've got some of the night

Lemn Sissay28:54

You know what I mean? The creativity is is who we are. I really do believe that. And you know, it's just a shame that people wait till they're sixty and say, Right, I'm going to knit a novel. Do you know what I mean?'Cause you you know, if you want to knit a novel, do it.

Presenter29:06

Do it now. Oh, is knitting a novel a thing?

Presenter29:10

Why not?

Presenter29:11

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay29:11

I don't know what I'm saying.

Lemn Sissay29:14

Knit yourself a novel.

Presenter29:16

Maybe we've got something there. Let's have your next piece of music, Lampsissi. We are on your seventh.

Lemn Sissay29:22

Well, this is Mr. Prince, who is kinda cool.

Lemn Sissay29:29

But he's also a great musician, you know, and a great respecter of the noise of music. And this song is called Nothing Compares to You and he is the man who wrote the song.

Lemn Sissay29:43

I just I just love it.

Speaker 429:45

Eat my dinner in a fancy pressure

Speaker 429:51

Oh yeah, but nothing.

Speaker 429:53

Nothing could take away this blue

Speaker 429:58

Woah.

Speaker 430:00

Nothing compared.

Speaker 430:05

Nothing compares to you

Speaker 430:09

Yeah.

Presenter30:11

That was Prince with Rosie Gaines singing Nothing Compares to You. Um Lancissi, you've spoken so eloquently about your life's work, which has been constructing your truth and understanding yourself and your experience through curating your past. Has it worked? Do you feel that you are surrounded by yourself and your past and who you are now as you live each day?

Lemn Sissay30:38

The most important lesson I learned

Lemn Sissay30:41

is to let go of it all.

Lemn Sissay30:45

To let go of the family.

Lemn Sissay30:47

To let go of anybody who doesn't want to talk to me and to accept anybody who does.

Lemn Sissay30:53

It it's not to hold on to this narrative uh and to sort of hug the bruise. I am not defined by my scars, but by the incredible abilities of it to heal.

Lemn Sissay31:08

But uh you have to live in the present.

Lemn Sissay31:12

Which means I can laugh and I can be scatty and I can be depressed and I can be blah, but I have to live in the present, not in the past, and certainly not in the future. And I find that to be the most powerful place to be. It's the only place to write from.

Presenter31:28

Tell me about your final piece of music, Lemses say.

Lemn Sissay31:31

Oh man, this is B B King. This song is just happy, but it's called Better Not Look Down, so it acknowledges that there's a long way to fall if you want to go in that direction, but there's a great life.

Lemn Sissay31:47

I believed that if you reach for the top of the tree you get to the first branch, but if you reach for the stars you get to the top of the tree. And I have never lived my life based on the standards that a lot of the institutionalized people around me have had. And I believe the same for happiness.

Speaker 232:04

An old girlfriend of mine showed up the other day. That girl had lived in love and for love and over love and under love all her life.

Speaker 232:14

If the arrows from Cupid's bow that had passed through her heart had been sticking out of her body, she would look like a pokophy.

Speaker 232:22

And she asked me, Phoebe, do you think I've lived my life all wrong? And I said the only advice I have to pass along is concealed in the course of this song, huh?

Presenter32:28

Yeah.

Speaker 232:32

Yeah.

Speaker 232:34

If you want it.

Speaker 432:36

Yeah.

Speaker 232:36

I love it.

Speaker 432:37

Put the hammer down.

Presenter32:41

That was B B King and Better Not Look Down. So, Lem, it's time for me to cast you away, and as I do I will give you some books. Traditionally I give castaways the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and they get to take one other book along with them. What is your book going to be?

Lemn Sissay32:57

My book uh is going to be the Koran because if I ever get saved, if it's uh, you know, Muslim people on a boat, I want to go, Look, I've got a Koran and if it's like Christians, I'll go, Look, I've got a Bible And if it's like a mixture of them two, I'll be like, That's so funny because I've got both and they're in dialogue.

Presenter33:17

Yeah.

Lemn Sissay33:17

Righty-ho, and a luxury too. My luxury will be pen and paper.

Presenter33:22

Paper and pen it is. And finally, if I had to demand of you that you would pick just one of these eight discs to save, which one would it be?

Lemn Sissay33:29

Says by Nils Fram

Presenter33:31

It's yours. Lem Sisi, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Lemn Sissay33:36

Kirsty Jung, thank you.

Presenter34:18

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.