Google the name “Lemn Sissay” and all the returning hits will be about him because there is only one Lemn Sissay in the world. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nominated award winning writer, international poet, performer playwright, artist and broadcaster.

Having accepted that we would not be able to invite you to see Lemn Sissay physically in our theatre, we decided to beam him directly from the Clonter stage into your sitting room instead.

In order to turn a negative into a positive, we would like to invite you to engage with Lemn, in advance of the event, which is not something we are usually able to do.

How appropriate it seems that  such an inspirational figure should be imparting an insight into how to overcome adversity, in this year of all years, on World Mental Health Day.

The show will be in two parts – It will start with Lemn Sissay’s show ‘My Name is Why’, followed by a Q&A, and therefore we would like to invite anyone to submit questions in advance, which we will pass on to the interviewer (See below for details). In  the second part Lemn Sissay will share some of his poetry with the audience, supported by local poet Helen Kay.
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An Evening with Lemn Sissay – Promo
(To book an E-ticket for this show, please scroll down.)
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For those unfamiliar with this name, Google the name “Lemn Sissay” and all the returning hits will be about him because there is only one Lemn Sissay in the world. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nominated award winning writer, international poet, performer playwright, artist and broadcaster. He has read on stage throughout the world: from The Library of Congress in The United States to The University of Addis Ababa, from Singapore to Sri Lanka, Bangalore to Dubai, from Bali to Greenland AND Wigan library.

He was awarded an MBE for services to literature by The Queen of England. Along with Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie and Margaret Atwood he won a Pen Pinter Prize in 2019. He is Chancellor of The University of Manchester and an Honorary Doctor from The Universities of Huddersfield, Manchester, Kent and Brunei. He is Dr Dr Dr Dr Lemn Sissay. He was the first poet commissioned to write for the London Olympics and poet of the FA Cup.

Programme

‘My Name is Why’
Q&A
Poetry Reading (Support – Helen Kay)

Helen Kay

Helen’s poems crop up in various magazines. In 2018-2019 she was second in the Leeds Peace and the Welshpool Festival competitions. She curates a project to support dyslexic poets: Facebook page Dyslexia and Poetry. Her pamphlet, This Lexia & Other Languages was published by V. Press in July 2020 and is available at http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/p/bookshop.html. She loves chickens and has a sidekick hen puppet called Nigella.

‘Pay What You Feel’ Policy

Having presented our digital outreach programme for free thus far, sadly as this situation has gone on much longer than we thought, we now feel that we must adopt a mechanism that is helping keep the prospect of theatres reopening globally a possibility, and that is to ask that any future content is purchased on a ‘Pay What You Feel’ basis. This also enables us to offer this FREE to Friends and Patrons of Clonter.
Become a Friend – https://www.clonter.org/support-us/become-a-friend/

E- Tickets £5, £10, £20

There is no booking fee applicable for this event.

The link to the performance will be detailed on your ticket, which will be emailed to you.

This event will be broadcast ‘live’ at 7pm on Saturday 10 October, but the show will be available for one week following broadcast.

Please, if you would like to submit a question, or have any queries, contact our Box Office at boxoffice@clonter.org. The deadline to submit a question is Tuesday 22nd September.

Please be aware that the box office is only currently being manned on a Wednesday and Friday at the moment.

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