Lemn Sissay

Poet Lemn Sissay delighted us with his Winter Walk on BBC Four – and he believes walking has become a powerful force for good in the world…

The poet, author and Winter Walks star says walking has at last become recognised as a powerful force for the national good.

THERE IS DEFINITELY something happening with walking,” says Lemn Sissay. “Something is building. A national appreciation. Culturally, artistically, socially: I think walking is now a very powerful force in people’s lives. “And man, that is brilliant.”

With that, Lemn smiles a broad, warm smile – the same smile that recently beguiled viewers on BBC Four’s beautiful Winter Walks programme.

Perhaps the timeliest show in recent TV history, Winter Walks was recorded in early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, and broadcast in the dark, cold, locked-down days of January this year – just when we needed it most.

Other contributors included politician Baroness Warsi, poet Simon Armitage and musician-vicar Richard Coles. But it was Lemn’s journey through a crisp, sunny day in the Yorkshire Dales that kicked the whole thing off, and introduced us to a wonderful new voice in the world of walking.

“I couldn’t believe the response; my Twitter feed is still full of people saying nice things about it,” says Lemn.

“It’s amazing. It was basically a guy walking through the hills. But somehow it spoke to a lot of people.”

It might have been the simple format: Lemn, alone, carrying a selfie-stick camera to record his thoughts.

A drone overhead showed the bigger picture, and allowed short, informative captions to appear in the sky, leaving Lemn free to walk, talk or say nothing. The important thing, he says, is that he wasn’t a presenter.

“I didn’t have to remember to say certain things, or go back and do a shot again,” he explains. “It was a genuine walk. When I came to the edge of the valley and saw the landscape spread out in front of me, the emotion was real. The rush of space seemed to dive into me and filled me with what I can only describe as wonder, and the camera quietly caught all of it.”

The process suited Lemn’s talents perfectly. Hailed as one of Britain’s foremost contemporary writers, Lemn has published four volumes of poetry and written seven stage plays. He was the official poet of the 2012 Olympics, and this year he has joined the Duchess of Cambridge to curate an exhibition by the National Portrait Gallery made up of photos taken by the public to illustrate life in lockdown, titled Hold Still.

Walking has sustained Lemn through some very dark times. Fostered at birth, he suffered a traumatic upbringing in the Lancashire care system (see panel). But walking was a partial escape.

“It started with Rivington Pike in the Pennines, which was near where I first grew up with a foster family,” says Lemn.

“Everyone walked up Rivington Pike. There was a special Good Friday walk to the top, but people climbed it all the time anyway. So I just assumed that walking up the nearest hill was something everybody did. It was only when I moved to Manchester as a young adult that I realised it wasn’t like that everywhere.”

Another formative experience came when the family stayed at a croft owned by his foster-grandfather at Lochinver in the Highlands. Lemn and his fostersiblings would walk off into the wilderness, coming face to face with spectacular mountains like Suilven.

“Everyone walked up Rivington Pike. There was a special Good Friday walk to the top, but people climbed it all the time anyway.”