LEMN Sissay started writing as a child, in care, and went on to become one of British poetry's most exciting and original voices.

He was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics and was awarded the MBE for services to writing and broadcasting and his poems are installed as landmarks in Manchester and London.

Next month Lemn will be in Bradford, heading up a number of events at the city's Literature Festival.

First up, he talks to renowned poet Jo Bell about his poetic voyage of discovery. Lemn will talk about the writers and poets who have inspired him, recite pieces close to his heart, and reflect on how they have influenced his own writing.

Delving into the intricacies of the creative process, he will trace the influences that poets from past generations have on contemporary writers.

A further event sees Lemn, who is of Ethiopian origin, in conversation with Asfa-Wossen Asserate on the life of Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie. A descendant of King Solomon and a forerunner of African unity and independence, he fought with the Allies against the Axis powers during the Second World War and was the messiah of Jamaican Rastafarians. A reformer and autocrat, he was assassinated in a communist coup.

Asfa-Wossen Asserate’s biography of Haile Selassie is described as a "colourful portrait" of the emperor and Ethiopia’s tumultuous history.

Author Asfa-Wossen Asserate is the grand-nephew of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, the great-grandson of Empress Menen II and the son of the former governor and viceroy of Eritrea.

Lemn will re-join Jo Well, along with celebrated Mersey Poet Brian Patten and poet and author John Siddique, for a discussion called Poems with a Life of their Own, looking at poetry as language we turn to in testing and emotional times. Lemn talks about his poem Invisible Kisses, a favourite at weddings, Brian Patten discusses So Many Different Lengths of Time, written on the death of his friend and now recited at funerals, and John Siddique discusses Thirst and its links with freedom.

Lemn released his first book of poetry aged 21. In 1995 he made a BBC documentary, Internal Flight, about his life and his 2005 drama Something Dark, about his childhood in care and his search for his family, was adapted for BBC Radio 3 in 2006, winning the RIMA (Race in the Media) award from the UK Commission for Racial Equality.

Lemn was fostered as a baby and spent his early years in a Lancashire children's home. He started writing as a way of seeking solace. When he brought his show Something Dark, exploring race, family, identity, depression and love, to Bradford he told the T&A: "It's a perspective of the life of a child in care, my life, and although it's called care, that's the last thing I got.

"It's a story about a kid in care that goes from a small Lancashire town to the mountains of Ethiopia."

Lemn describes himself as a tough kid from a northern children's home who just happened to like poetry.

"I don't really know where it came from, I certainly wasn't swotty," he said. "McCavity's Cat was the first poem I remembered. I used to write funny stories for my mates, and love poems to girls they fancied. People think poetry isn't part of them but it's everywhere - it's on birthday cards, gravestones, the death notices in newspapers."

* Lemn Sissay on his Favourite Poetry is at the Dye House Gallery, Bradford College, on Friday, May 15 at 7.30pm.

Asfa-Wossen Asserate in conversation with Lemn Sissay is at the Midland Hotel's French Ballroom on Sunday, May 17 at 11.30am.

Brian Patten, Lemn Sissay and John Siddique, with Jo Bell: Poems with a Life of their Own is at the Dye House Gallery on Saturday, May 23 at 2pm.