An Evening with Lemn Sissay

Early bird tickets £18 (£16 conc) available to midnight on Sunday 8 March 2026. 

Inspirational poet and Festival Patron Lemn Sissay OBE returns with a life-affirming and electrifying performance of his work.  

In the first half of his set, he will revisit past work from his collections such as Gold from the Stone. After the interval, Lemn will perform a selection of the short poems he creates every morning at dawn, collected in the anthology Let the Light Pour In. Poignant, often humorous, these poems are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. 

The performance of 2 x 40-minute sets with a 20-minute interval will be followed by a book signing. 

Lemn Sissay OBE is a poet, playwright, memoirist, performer and broadcaster. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Gold from the Stone, the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling memoir My Name Is Why and the children’s book Don’t Ask The Dragon, illustrated by Gregg Stobbs. 

Lemn was awarded The Pen Pinter Prize in 2019 and has been nominated for and won numerous awards for his writing, TV documentaries, radio work and plays. He was the first poet commissioned to write for the London Olympics 2012 and has judged many prestigious literary competitions. He has also worked in music over the years, including with Leftfield, Baaba Maal and the BBC Proms. 

In 2015 he brought a legal case against the government for critical mistakes in the first 18 years of his life; the government settled out of court in 2018. In 2020, the BBC series imagine… broadcast a two-part documentary about his life, ‘The Memory of Me’.  

In 2021 he was named OBE for services to Literature and Charity. The University of Huddersfield has awarded him an honorary doctorate, and has also established the Lemn Sissay PhD scholarship for Care Leavers.  

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Host or Publisher Huddersfield Literature Festival