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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Nantucket Project: Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind [Watch (HLS stream): The Nantucket Project: Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/pl9seuJb.m3u8) (19:16)  _Published 2014-11-13. Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind_ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:30 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The Nantucket Project: Judy Smith](/video/wRwidb8Z/) ### The Nantucket Project: Judy Smith [The Nantucket Project: Shiza Shahid](/video/n501ZY2L/) ### The Nantucket Project: Shiza Shahid [The Nantucket Project: Nancy Lublin](/video/gTlPPcK2/) ### The Nantucket Project: Nancy Lublin --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] [ NOISE ] It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have been invited here, and to be held in kind. My name is Lemsis and I write poetry. I write books. Poetry is the voice of the back of the mind. And I'm here to tell you. To share with you. I was brought up in the care system in England. For 18 years. And if the care, if you're brought up in the, in the care system. The government is, legally your parent. Legally. So legally, for 18 years, from six months old, three months old to 18 the government was my parent. Margaret Thatcher was my mother. Let's not talk about breast feeding. The queen could be my grand mother. The government my extension, my extended family. The fact is I believe that you should be able to judge a government, above all things on how it is as a parent as you would yourself. Judge yourself above all things possibly, possibly not, on how you are as a parent. Harry Potter was a foster child. Superman was a foster child. Batman was orphaned. James from, James and the Giant Peach, was I think adopted or parentless. Matilda. Moses. [ LAUGH ] Moses was adopted. [ LAUGH ] Jesus. Careful. I, I can feel the ground. [ LAUGH ] But Jesus was from, a single parent family [ LAUGH ] Muhammad from the Koran, it can be discussed, okay, it can be discussed. Maybe we should split up into small groups and discuss whether that was a relevant joke to say in this environment. But to split up into small groups we'd need a worker to administrate the process and to get a worker to administrate the process, we'll have to apply for funding. To apply funding we'd have to justify our existence through a constitution. Anyway, that's a whole other story. Moses, James and the Giant Peach, Oliver Twist, Superman, Batman, all of the X- Men were in care. How is it that we've not made the connection between these incredibly credible individuals. I said Matilda, David Copperfield, James Bond was a foster child. Harry Potter. Was a foster child, Darth Vader Luke Skywalk, worker [ LAUGH ] Luke Skywalker the worker [ LAUGH ] . Was Spencer's life searching for his parents writer's writers about children who don't have parents not to free themselves from the fact of having parents, but because children outside of families. Start to get unique insights into what family is. Into the nature of family. Something that most people who have children do not want their children to know because to know how important family is you would have to extricate not just the family but the memory of family. These children see things. They see things and that's why writers use them to tell great stories. Great stories. Whether those are the stories or religion, great religions, or whether those are the stories of a, funny stories or, or, or mysteries. Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Adopted, brought up in care, we see things. And none of that I was going to say. That is the truth, Ruth. My mother, she came to -, I've, I write poetry. I write books, and I've written them all my life. And I saw my life as a, as a, as a writer. And my mother came, so why, why was I in care. Was there a bad woman at the sar heart of it? Was there some. Is there somebody I can blame, we can collectively blame so that we can use our charitable brain which is easy to access? My mother came to England in 1968. The year of the Enoch Powell speech in England. The year the Beatles album came out. Which became known as the White Album. Which was, was the Beatles album. A time when the word black and white were never more associated with race. The year before Martin Luther was killed. In England, race was the subject in a big way. My mother flew over from Ethiopia. There is a connection. With the orthodox church in Russia but my mother came over from Ethiopia to study in England for a short period of time. We are all immigrants. We are all migrating from the moment we leave the room we migrate into the air. We migrate from teenage years to adulthood. We migrate from our small towns to our big cities. Migration is what and who we are. To be anitimmgrant. To be anti- migration is to be anti- nature. However, that also I wasn't going to say, my mother flew to England to have a, to not to have me. [ LAUGH ] There's a story it's a study. And ,. Found herself pregnant. She was then because she was pregnant she was put in a mother and baby home. A lot of Irish women found themselves in these mother and baby homes that were run by nuns. That made women who were pregnant outside of wedlock feel guilt that was given to them by both their parents, society, the government and the church all in one. So there was a system. Get the mother separated from society. Get the child adopted and make the story clean and cut it. So when she's mostly vulnerable, she's in the mother and baby's home. the, the, she signs the adoption papers. She thinks she can see her child in a few weeks. There's a reason I'm telling you this. She thinks she can see her child in a few weeks in a few months. She never sees the child again. The child is adopted. She's never heard the word adoption before. She's been introduced both to the word adoption and the concept at the most vulnerable time in her life, on the bridge between childhood and adulthood. She's press ganged. But that won't be the story, that's not the narrative that's going to be written. The child goes to the adopted, the adoptive parents, who want to do good. Everybody is right in this scenario. They want to do good. They adopt a child. The social worker manages the process. If, if you like, the mother is the crop, the child is the crop, the mother is the earth. The government are the farmers, and the adopting parents are the consumers. Difficult, difficult, difficult. My mother, did not want me adopted, and would not sign the adoption papers, and she wanted me fostered for a short period of time. The saddest thing is that oh, short period of time. The Social worker gave me to foster parents, and said to them. Treat this as an adoption, he's yours forever. His name is Norman. [ LAUGH ] Now they didn't, I know. I know, you can laugh, don't worry Norman, freakin Norman. [ LAUGH ] Give me a freakin break. But I was happy with it because it's all I ever knew so it was all good. I was Norman. I was the only black in the village. I didn't meet a black person until I was nine years of age, I didn't know a black person until I was 15 years of age. The foster parents didn't foster me. They would but they didn't. God told them to foster me. It wasn't their choice. It was God's choice to choose them to choose me. Praise him. By twelve years of age, I had the devil inside of me. This is what they told me. I was dying when they did tell me to say at the breakfast table, pass me the ketchup, but I, I, I just didn't, I just didn't [ LAUGH ] I just did. I know there's one of you in the audience going, I'm not sure I like this. [ LAUGH ] Not sure what's going on here. [ LAUGH ] Seek the truth, endure the consequences. So, they put me into care and they said they would never write to me and never speak to me again. I lost everybody at 11 and a half years of age. My mother. My father. My sisters. My brothers. My aunts. My cousins. My, my, my everybody my granddad was Duncan Monroe from [ INAUDIBLE ] I spent half of my childhood in Scotland. in, in this beautiful in the Highlands. And basically they sat me around a table, they said, you don't love us do you. I said, I do. They said go away, read the bible, come back tomorrow and tell us, and I said to them, I mustn't love you because your asking me if I love you. But I'll ask God for forgiveness because that's what you do as a Baptist. You ask God for forgiveness. And, and, and, and I said I'll ask God for forgiveness and through his love I will I will learn to love you. It was a theological question. It was the first time I had to think outside of myself and I loved the challenge. And I came back with the answer. And my foster mother said to me, because you don't love us. You don't want to be with us, and they put me in care and they said that's why we're not writing to you. That's why we're not going to see you, because you chose to leave us. The social worker took me to the children's homes and I said to the social worker, I know this is my fault. I'll ask god for forgiveness. And he said, none of this is your fault. None of it. The children's homes then held me. There's a reason I'm telling you this. They held me for five years in six different children's homes. The final one was like a prison at 17 years of age, and then they were letting me go. I've got to tell you this. Since leaving the children's home, I've proved all of this by fact. When I left the children's home at 18 years of age, I was given my birth certificate, and my name wasn't Norman. [ LAUGH ]. It was Lem Seeley. And I said that I want that to have that as my name and everybody in that small village that I grew up they wouldn't talk to me because they thought I'd gone crazy. The fact is I did go barefoot for a year, so I suppose that, that would have add to the feeling that I was going a little bit crazy. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to rebel. And I wanted to rebel without hurting anybody else. So I took my shoes off and I walked barefoot for an entire year. within, so I was given my birth certificate and I was given a letter from my mother. The social worker said somebody did love you. And it gave me letters from my mother pleading for me back. She said I want him to be with his own people in his own country. I don't want him to face discrimination. A 21- year- old woman said that in 1967- 68 to a social worker to whom she gave me to to have me fostered for a short period of time. Who had no intention of giving me back. Whose name was Norman. He named me after himself. [ LAUGH ] The foster parents wanted to call me Mark after Mark in the Bible and their third name is Greenwood. Now when I leave care either I'm crazy or this is true and I start to understand when I leave care at 18 years of age that I don't know anybody that knows me for longer than a year. And I start to realize that all family is is a group of people proving that each other exists over a lifetime. All family is is a group of disputed memories between one group of people over a lifetime. And I did not have anybody to. The memory of me. And I knew that at 18 years of age. Nobody knew me who I knew for longer than a year because of the states of moving to different children's homes, because of the, the, the stuff, because of the parents never contacting me, the foster parents. I then. But three years in three years after leaving the children's homes I've got a book of poetry published on a double page in The Guardian Newspaper. A double page in The Guardian Newspaper at 21. Now I know what that means. By the way, I'm like, damn how did he do that? Double page in the Guardian newspaper, not about my story, about my poetry. And it says, Lemn Sissay has success written all over his forehead. And I knew how dangerous that was then, because I was relative to nothing. I can't tell you how dangerous that is. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it fall? Nobody, I was utterly out off context. I don't know if you understand this. But if any of you have a family you've, you've got to understand it. It's why mothers say to their sons when their sons are 45 you know, have you washed your socks properly? You know, [ LAUGH ] a point of relativity. I everything. [ LAUGH ] We could unpack that beautifully. I found my family all over the world. My mother married the Vice Minister to Finance under the emperor Halie Selassie. My father was a pilot for Ethiopian airlines. My sisters and brothers were studying in international schools in Paris and Belgium while I was glue sniffing in children's home and tattooing myself with the name Norman Greenwood and [ INAUDIBLE ] white which is the nickname that I was given so that people could sort of [ INAUDIBLE ] the color of skin and, and, and, and and, and, and, and feel the [ INAUDIBLE ]. Feel that they could own me, cuz I was owned. I found my family. It took me from 18 to 32. I used all of my resources in the success as a writer and playwright to find them, and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else, and I want you to know that. [ APPLAUSE ] I've shared my story with you because the theme of this project, the Nantucket Project is seek the truth and endure the consequences. I've brought myself a new narrative to a family that thought they'd already had their family narrative sorted. We're all okay with the story, aren't we? We know what we're not talking about. We know what we are talking about. And everything is, is okay as long as we all do that. I was counter to all of that. I could only destroy a narrative that was not real. It was only there to prop up people. Therefore within five years of finding all of my family, and 90 % of them had decided they will never talk to me again. I, I kid you not. And, when they did that to me, when they sent me the emails and told me not to talk my story, after never knowing that I was actually alive most of them. My father married somebody else, my mother married somebody else, yeah? I realized then, sorry I've lost my track, but I realized then that I got and I found ,. Oh. I found I f- f- found myself. The biggest thing that I found, in searching for my family, was myself, with all my mess, and all my dysfunction, and all, and it's all okay. And I feel blessed. [ APPLAUSE ] I feel blessed. Can I just read one poem? Just one short poem, thanks. A scruffy end from my good self there, but seeing the truth endure the consequences is entirely what my talk has been about. This poem I wrote some time ago, it's called Gold from the Stone. I wrote it before I even knew I had a sister. Gold from the stone, oil from the Earth, I yearn for my home ever since my birth. Strength of a mother's whisper shall carry me until. The hand of my lost sister joins onto my will. Roots to the earth, blood from the heart could never from birth be broken apart. Food from the platter, water from the rain. The subject and the matter, i'm going home again. You can't sell a leaf to a tree. Nor the wind to the atmosphere. I know where I'm meant to be. Can't be satisfied here. You can't give light to the moon, nor mist to the drifting clouds. I should be leaving here soon. Costumed, cultured, crowned, sugar from the cane, cold from the wood, water from the rain, life from the blood, gold from the stone, oil from the earth. I yearned for my home ever since my birth food from the platter. Water from the rain, the subject and the matter. I'm going home again. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you, thank you, thank you. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Nantucket Project: Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind","description":"Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/pl9seuJb/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-11-13T16:05:48.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/pl9seuJb.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/pl9seuJb/","duration":"PT19M16S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/pl9seuJb/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```