Lemn Sissay will be coming out to Malta soon to give us a one man performance directed by John E. McGrath, at St James Centre for Creativity. Marie Benoît contacted him by e-mail and asked him a few questions regarding his life and performance.

Something Dark tells the true story of Lemn Sissay who as a baby was given up by his Ethiopian mother in the 1960s. He was renamed Norman Greenwood and nicknames Chalky White throughout his turbulent childhood in care, only find out his real name a the age of 18. No longer the possession of the social services, he left the brutal suburbs of Lancashire for the bright lights of Manchester where he became a celebrated performance poet. Aged 21 Lemn left for Gambia in search of his mother and the truth about his father.

Something Dark is written by Lemn Sissay. In it he plunders his astonishihg life story to create a virtuoso performance of searing honesty, laced with secrets, lies and truths too terrible to mention and artistically influenced by his background in poetry. Sissay has a poet’s ear for language and metaphor. He recoudnts difficult experiences often with humour, never self-pity.

Lemn has had five books published over ten years, appeared regularly on BBC’s Grumpy Old Men and Radio 4 and guested on over forty albums.

Have you any idea why your mother gave you up? Was she a single mother? Did she give you up for adoption or did she place you in care? Where?

My mother never gave me up. My mother had me fostered for a short period of time. It was the 1960s and she travelled to England from Ethiopia to study. Ethiopia at the time was a wonderful rich and cultivated place. It was the high point of Ethiopia’s development in the 20th century. My mother was a perfect example of this international and domestic development. She was educated, independent, wealthy and travelling to England to study at a private college and to return, which she did to Ethiopia.  Something Dark is primarily about the search for this woman since she left England in 1968, right up to the present day. And more importantly I searched for answers to the question: "Why could not this woman take her child with her?".

How did your mother, an Ethiopian, finish up in The Gambia? Did you manage to track her down?

It all has to do with a traumatic revolution in Ethiopia in 1974, her husband a minister for the government was jailed – she worked for the United Nations and had to flee the country  as she was going to be killed. Her sons and daughters were at an international school in France.  Of all of this I had no idea. Something Dark is fiercely autobiographical and comes fifteen years into a literary career where I wrote about five books of poetry and travelled the world.  In Something Dark I wanted to say something very real, very honest, very personal very funny and very serious, very light and very dark. Since leaving the children’s home at eighteen years of age, with absolutely no family surrogate, I made it my mission to find her and find answers.  This search has been the narrative to my adult life – it is punctuated by various broadcasts and documentaries on the world service and BBCTV. The other narrative has been pursuing the better poem.  

Have you ever visited Ethiopia?

Yes, many times.

Having been through so much trauma what would you say is the biggest lesson you have learnt from it all?

I am not sure about learning lessons through trauma. Lessons from trauma – it's a little like discovering the beauty of water after suffering starvation to the point of near death; "Ahh yes I learned that water is good". I don't know what lessons I have learned. But I tell you this. Every family has its secrets and that's okay. Sometimes secrets are the things that glue a family together - it's a sort of twisted honour of thieves. But secrets don't go away, they get passed on – secretly – from generation to generation. It doesn't matter if that secret is a person or a reason for a person’s behaviour.  One person in one generation, for whatever reason will discover what that secret is.

But yes I have learned many things. Many things that may only be profound to me. Extraordinary narratives give rise to extraordinary insights. But often the insights are relevant to the person rather than to others.  I have learned that if you turn down the sound then someone laughing looks exactly the same as someone crying. I have learned that laughter is as good for the human spirit as tears and that to deny either is dangerous.

I have learned that if you don't hug your child he or she will go through life with their arms held out. I have learned that bitterness rots the vessel that carries it. I have learned that one does not need to forgive to rid ones self of bitterness or cynicism. I have learned that the idea of forgiveness to better the human who forgives is a false economy. I have learned that denial (de nile hehe) is not a river in Egypt.  I have learned that life is not worth living if there is no one that you would die for.  I have learned that binary opposites are a primary way of controlling society and its people.  If you think you only have two choices (binary opposites)  then you are easier to control. If you offer two choices you can control others. I have learned that all people are born good people. I have learned that what goes around, however long it takes, comes around. I have learned that I don't want to survive, in life, I want to live.  I have learned that everywhere in the computer is accessible.

Surely you have something special to say about life and how to deal with its difficulties?

It's often not apparent.  I have waited for my writing skills to catch up with my story so I could tell the story to the best of my ability with integrity, laughter and tears; so that the audience is lifted; so that the journey is exciting and has all the highs and lows that I experienced; so that the audience chooses the journey and gets on the plane with me; so the audience senses the same shock of turbulence as I fly and grasps for the seat in front, the same way as I.  Something Dark is a journey of the spirit.  And if there is one thing I know about life and its difficulties is that when you let go of logic all you have is your spirit and your intuition. The times in your life when you trusted these two things are the times in your life that you will always remember. Why?

Something Dark was commissioned and broadcast by Radio 3 in October 2004 and won the RIMA award for best radio drama in 2005.

Tickets are available from St James Cavalier, Valletta. For booking information please contact the booking office: Phone 21 22 32 00 or 21 22 32 16 or email boxoffice@sjcav.org

The interview was published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on January 8 2006.