PEN Pinter Prize winner and Sunday Times bestseller Lemn Sissay comes to Book Week for the first time to perform the best of the witty, wonder-filled short poems he composes at the break of dawn.

‘How do you do it?’ said night ‘How do you wake up and shine?’ ‘I keep it simple,’ said light ‘One day at a time’.

Recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize, the Freedom of London and an OBE for services to literature, Lemn Sissay is one of our most beloved poets. Having recently adapted Kafka’s Metamorphosis for the stage, he makes his Book Week debut with Let The Light Pour In, the follow-up to his Sunday Times No.1 bestseller My Name is Why. This life-affirming collection, fuelled with resilience and defiant joy, features the best of the witty, wonder-filled short poems he composes each day at the break of dawn, as well as chronicling his own battle with the darkness, and celebrating his morning practice.

Buy a copy of Let The Light Pour In by Lemn Sissay.

This event will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval. 

About the speakers:

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.