Lemn Sissay's Origin Stories

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Lemn Sissay's Origin Stories: 3. Is It a Bird?

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3. Is It a Bird?

BBC Radio 4 - Lemn Sissay's Origin Stories, 3. Is It a Bird?

Lemn examines how he hid his feelings and identity to fit in with the world around him.

Poet Lemn examines how he hid his true self to better fit into the world around him. With Deborah Frances-White. From 2016.

Batman was an orphan; Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was an orphan; Superman was an orphan and a foundling. Cinderella was a foster child. Darth Vader - well, they can't all be winners.

Taking a comic and poetic angle, Lemn Sissay compares reality against the treatment of children raised in care, orphans and foster children in popular culture. Because it surely says something about how we view them that we create so many for fiction?

The most important thing that John and Martha Kent taught Clark, the boy they found in a strange-looking pod that crash-landed on their Kansas farm, was to keep his true self secret. 

People wouldn't understand that you can lift cars, melt steel beams with your eyes, or fly. People will be scared of you because you are different. Every adoptee and every care leaver knows this feeling. Lemn examines how he hid his feelings, his experiences, his identity, in order to fit in better with the world around him.

Lemn also talks to comedian and adoptee Deborah Frances-White about secret identities - and how to go about reinventing yourself.

Written and performed by Lemn Sissay.

Producer: Ed Morrish

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2016.

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Poet Lemn Sissay looks at foster children and children in care in popular culture.

Poet Lemn Sissay looks at foster children and children in care in popular culture, contrasting their treatment with those in the real world.

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