Lemn Sissay's Homecoming

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Lemn Sissay's Homecoming: London

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BBC Radio 4 - Lemn Sissay's Homecoming, London

Poet Lemn Sissay explores the nature of home through comedy, poetry and conversation.

Poet Lemn Sissay explores the nature of home through comedy, poetry and conversation. Recorded in London in 2015.

We all leave. We all migrate from childhood to adulthood, from village to town to city, from single to married.

We all hate and love where we are from. We are all immigrants of time.

There are problems with home and a need to leave. There is a love of home and a need to leave.

Goodbye is who we are.

Lemn Sissay explores what "home" means through stand-up, poetry and conversation. It's surely not just a physical location - it's the people, the memories, the feeling. It's not home if you don't belong there, it's just where you live.

The second of two shows recorded in front of an audience in Lemn's adopted home of London. 

But he is still perhaps more closely associated with Manchester. He arrived there aged 18 with a birth certificate, a fist full of poems and a mouth. It was about to become Madchester. 

He grew into the talented adopted son of a wonderful, dysfunctional family and thrived. His poems have become landmarks throughout the city. He's tattooed its body. And then he left. He just left. 

Talking to Lemn about his journey are Mancunian broadcaster Terry Christian, and artistic director of the Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly

Written and performed by Lemn Sissay,

Producer: Ed Morrish

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2015.

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Poet Lemn Sissay explores the nature of home through comedy, poetry and conversation

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