Gold from the Stone

Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning writer and broadcaster. He has authored collections of poetry and plays and his memoir My Name Is Why was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and Addis Ababa. He has been made an Honorary Doctor by the universities of Manchester, Kent, Essex, Huddersfield and Brunel, and in 2019 he was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize. He received an MBE in 2010 and an OBE in 2021 for services to literature and charity. In 2023, Sissay was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. He is British and Ethiopian.

@lemnsissay | lemnsissay.com

Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries.

He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the London Olympics, and to millions across our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one of the nation's best-loved voices.

New work and old favourites from national treasure Lemn SissayLemn Sissay is a passionate and powerful voice whose performances are humbling and exhilaratingHugely enjoyable, inventive, funny and touchingOne of the most original, challenging poets writing in Britain today, and his extraordinary, heart-breaking, courageous life story is the stuff of legend . . . The collection showcases his breadth, his passion, his anger and his humanity . . . Full of light and hope . . . A prodigious talentA tremendous selection of his poetry . . . His gift as a writer - of plays, poetry, documentaries - is for turning life's base metal into goldThis volume of selected and new poems traces [Sissay's] path from gifted adolescent to accomplished poetic voice, railing with passion and prowess against the "quiet violence of the day-to-day"A collection of the poet's best-loved works . . . The performative element to his poetry is evident but no vibrancy or emotion is lost on paper, where his honesty, charm and humour prevail . . . Gold from the Stone maps Sissay's development as a poet and writer but also his many personal triumphs, even when the odds were stacked against him ****A literary institutionA lyrical geniusHis name is magic, his poems are songs on the street