The chancellor of the University of Manchester has been awarded an OBE and celebrated with a coffee at McDonalds before the ceremony. Lemn Sissay, 54 from Wigan, was the official poet of the London 2012 Olympics and awarded an MBE in 2009, along with many other accolades.
Today, he was recognised with an Order of the British Empire at Windsor Castle.
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The poet honoured the occasion with a quick coffee stop at McDonalds where he posed with a statue of a Beefeater and shared his experience on Facebook and Twitter with a post that read:
“Here I am at Windsor Castle. But first we had coffee at Macdonalds(sic). Pre OBE.”
Lemn Sissay was born in Greater Manchester to an Ethiopian mother who moved to the UK while pregnant with him. He spent many of his early years in and out of foster care children’s homes.
His connection to Manchester remains strong as he is currently the Chancellor of the University of Manchester, serving a seven year term which began in 2015. In this role, Sissay created a bursary to increase the number of black students studying law at the university.
His famed poetry can be seen all around the city with murals of his poetry on walls in Chorlton on Medlock, Oxford Road, Old Trafford and many other locations.
At 17 he self-published his first pamphlet of poetry using his unemployment benefit money, which he sold to miners on strike in Lancashire. He released his first book in 1988 at the age of 21.
Since the age of 24, Lemn Sissay has been a full-time writer with credits at the BBC where he made a documentary, Internal Flight, about his own life. Since then he has written TV dramas, radio plays and many books.
