Seeing Lemn Sissay at the Cheltenham Literature Festival was a real joy, he was such an entertainer. People often stay away from poetry events at literature festivals as they have been put off poetry at school and often find it rather highbrow and inexplicable. Lemn seemed to understand this fully.

“If you don’t like my poetry, that’s fine,” he said, or words to that effect. “You don’t have to.” He gave us the permission to dislike it or fail to understand it without feeling intellectual morons, which was very refreshing. He entertained by making us laugh and reading mainly his poems from his latest book, ‘Let the light pour in’, explaining to us that he regularly posts on Facebook these quartets and short four line poems about the morning. Short poems for a generation of people with a limited attention span. It worked perfectly. The only frustration was with Waterstones, the stock provider. It was incredible to queue up at a literary event to visit the bookshop and buy the book just promoted on stage by the poet, to have it declared ‘out of stock!’ Lemn himself could hardly believe it.

But though I may have queued up for a book I couldn’t buy, it was a real pleasure for once to give a celebrated poet a copy of my book, ‘Bible Reflections from a life devoted to the poor’ by Dr Jember Teferra. She was a fellow Ethiopian with Lemn, who he remembered meeting as a young man in Manchester. I’m still reeling at the honour of a well-known poet, ex-chancellor of Manchester University and an OBE, posing with a copy of the book I had recently edited and produced along with Arthur Champion! But perhaps the honour really goes to Jember for her amazing work among the poor, as it should. She was awarded the ‘Ma Afrika’ award for her work but is largely unrecognised in the UK.

The book can be purchased directly from me at journojohnson@aol.com or on my bookshop on this website.