A Toast to the People: Lemn Sissay | 2021 International Festival

The 2021 Edinburgh International Festival’s ’A Toast to the People’ series commissioned ten spoken word artists to write a piece inspired by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s ‘A Toast to the People’. Here, Lemn Sissay performs his work ’Toast’ in Edinburgh’s Nicolson Square Gardens. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, international prizewinning writer who was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2010. He has read on stage throughout the world: from the Library of Congress in the United States to the University of Addis Ababa, from Singapore to Sri Lanka, Bangalore to Dubai, from Bali to Greenland and Wigan library. Along with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood, he won a Pen Pinter Prize in 2019. He is Chancellor of the University of Manchester and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Huddersfield, Manchester, Kent and Brunel.