We cannot be defined by war
04 Jul 2016
Our Chancellor, poet Lemn Sissay closes Somme commemoration
University Chancellor Lemn Sissay has commemorated the lives lost at the Somme with a poem, which he read at the close of a major remembrance event in Heaton Park.
Lemn read out his new work ‘The Listening Post’, which recounts the appallingly dangerous job of tunnelling underneath no man’s land in order to relay details of enemy troop movements back to the trenches.
It declares: “We cannot be defined by war.”
Lemn’s performance closed the event, which also included wartime music performed by the Halle Orchestra at the end of a whole day of commemorations to mark the first day of action at the Somme exactly 100 years ago.
The Battle of the Somme was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
Lemn said: “I feel very proud and blessed because a lot of people from Lancashire died in World War One. I did it for them.
“A lot has been written about it by the great war poets so I wanted to find something that hadn’t been written about before.
“It has resonance today because soldiers are still going to war and dying. In the poem I imagine the soldier at the listening post hearing 100 years ahead.
“We are also listening posts ourselves and can hear back in time. I remember a friend’s grandad who served in World War Two sitting at a kitchen table in Ashton and telling me: ‘The heroes never came back’. That has always stuck with me.”
To see Lemn perform part of the poem on BBC Breakfast News, visit: