The British poet Lemn Sissay has spoken of his ‘kinship’ with Marilyn, The Times reports.
“She’s been presented as the ultimate sex symbol, a pioneering female film star and a cautionary tale about the downside of fame. But for Lemn Sissay, Marilyn Monroe is above all a survivor of the care system he too lived through.
The poet, 59, has celebrated Monroe’s ‘fierce intelligence and wild beauty’ alongside the National Portrait Gallery for Celebration Day, a commemoration of the lives of the deceased.
To mark the occasion, which takes place on Monday, celebrities and cultural figures have spoken about famous individuals who have served as lifelong inspirations to them.
Sissay, the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, said he had always felt a kinship with Monroe because they both overcame traumatic childhood experiences in the care system.
‘Marilyn famously said that your childhood plays out in your adult life,’ Sissay said. ‘If you have been in care, your childhood is where you survive.’ Although her childhood affected her, ‘none of it stopped her brilliance’, he added.
Sissay was placed into the care system by his foster parents at the age of 12 and moved through four different children’s homes until he left the state system at age 18.
‘The reason that I chose her is because of her high intelligence, unseen,’ he said. ‘She’s a success in spite of having ten different families over ten years. The one thing she learnt in her childhood is that people disappear.’
Light, and how Monroe found it, is what drew him to a 1956 photograph taken by Cecil Beaton, which shows a bright-eyed Monroe against a dark background holding a bird in her hand.
For Sissay, the intense shadows framing her are a visual mirror of the isolation she faced growing up. ‘What I like about this shot is how all of the light is soaked by the subject, by Marilyn. You can look at this picture and say, “Wow, it’s a picture of a person with a future ahead of them.” And on the other hand, you can say that this is a person surrounded by darkness.’
Remembering Monroe, whose death from an overdose aged 36 was ruled as a probable suicide, has led Sissay to ponder how we treat death with shame and secrecy, when it should be out in the open.”
Lemn Sissay spoke in depth about Marilyn for a video, ‘The Portraits That Shape Us‘, filmed at Larry’s Bar in London’s National Portrait Gallery, where the exhibition, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, opens on June 4.
The Marilyn Report 