Lemn Sissay has been installed as Chancellor of Manchester University. The poet beat Labour politician Lord Mandelson and the Hallé Music director, Sir Mark Elder, to win the post. Sissay, who grew up in care near Wigan before moving to Manchester in his late teens, said:  “This is a homecoming for me. Just before I was voted in as chancellor I actually broadcast a piece on Radio 4 called ‘Lemn Sissay’s Homecoming’ in which I say Manchester is the greatest place on earth. That was incredible because I didn’t know at that point that this would be happening, because we’d been commissioned for the script months before.

“I want to show people by example that the University of Manchester is open to all, as a way of accessing the world. Education is one of the great elevators of the disadvantaged.”

At the start of the week he appeared on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young, talking, often with great emotion, about his childhood – being given up into foster care by his Ethiopian mother who needed to complete her studies; going into a care home at the age of 12 after his foster family no longer wanted him; leaving care at the age of 17 and funding his first self-published pamphlet of poetry from his dole money.

He now works with young people leaving care, and said: “If you want to know how young people in care feel, get them to write poetry.”  

He told Kirsty Young: “I don’t think as an artist you need to have a terrible story … the most important lesson I learned is to let go of it all…. I have to live in the present, not the past.”

The music he chose included Amazing Grace, Aretha Franklin singing Bridge Over Troubled Water, and BB King’s Better Not Look Down. Sissay said: “I believe that if you reach for the stars, you get to the top of the tree.”  

PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD