Lemn Sissay: ‘I am single. It’s been a while. I’m not worried, which is slightly worrying’

​Trying to finish my next book, and the other, better, Booker Prize-winning me: 35% 

The manuscript is 90% done with 100% commitment. My editor rides pillion. His name is Francis – “Francis with an eye”. I hope I am not stretching his patience along with the deadline. It’s a good time to be a writer. There are more words passing between more people than ever. We are in the age of the written word. There is no single rule to a writing life and no universally agreed standard output. Each to their own, I say. Although I believe there is another me, somewhere, a better writer, in another timeline, with all my lost or stolen laptops with their Booker Prize-winning Word documents. Of course. 

Friends and absent lovers: 25% ​

I am single. It’s been a while. Really? Has it been that long? Time slips by. I’m not worried, which is slightly worrying. Maybe I am. I need to get out there. I am happy. I have good friendships, which mean the world. I want to be a better friend. I have lost friends along the way. Friends who are knuckled with resentment. Friends who fell out with me. Sometimes it’s been my fault. Sometimes theirs. Sometimes both of us are to blame. Forgive them, forgive yourself and let it go, I tell myself. In lieu of family, do these matters have more prominence? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I know which is true for us all: life is not worth living if there is no one you would die for. In lieu of family, I constantly discover people I would die for. 

Being claimed by Ethiopia: 20%​ 

I am buzzed by Ethiopia and Ethiopians. This does not make me less proud to be British. Today I spoke to a world-class Ethiopian photographer and friend, Aida Muluneh. We are doing something together. I love my people. The boy from Wigan stolen from his family has been claimed by an entire country. Ethiopia is always on my mind. Like Wigan. In contrast just the other day I was in the flower park outside my childhood home in Ashton-in-Makerfield, with lovely Paddy O’Connell [the TV presenter and broadcaster] as it happens, and a man a few years older than myself spent half an hour telling me about who I was as a child. “And then you just disappeared,” he said. We all have more in common than what sets us apart. Wigan to Addis Ababa. I am all these places. 

Interrogating Ai Weiwei in a cell, for ‘the most important exhibitions of his life’: 10%

My passport is a kind of identity, but I am really from the republic of artists. One of the privileges of being a writer is knowing other artists: other writers, photographers, painters, dancers, singers, musicians.  In a few days’ time I will interrogate Ai Weiwei in a cell. It will be broadcast across the world online and on giant public screens. I have one hour with him in his 24-hour live performance, Sewing a Button, which he has described as “the most important exhibition of his life”: a reconstruction of the cell being built at time of writing. It’s all happening at Factory International in Manchester. As interrogator, I am formulating a series of questions. A few days ago I had coffee with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. I tested a question with them. I cannot tell you the question, but her answer was immediate and focused. “Two days ago,” she said. It is a question only someone who has been imprisoned will know to ask: a question which was explicitly answered by Charles Dickens and no doubt Oscar Wilde. 

Mastering cooking rice and baking cakes: 10% 

Every week I bake a cake and give it to people. It all started six months ago with a fruit cake. At the moment it is Victoria sponge. I have a dynamic shopping list on a notepad in my kitchen dangling from a butcher’s hook. I travel a lot so I photograph it and stock up at a Waitrose while on the road. I like cooking. I make curries and I have mastered rice. I am inspired by delicious Pakistan. Yoghurt is involved. I am lucky enough to have visited Pakistan. Good food is a sign of good people. Food is never far from my mind. I follow Sobia Spice on Instagram. She is a British Bradford Punjabi Pakistani. Love it. The reason I shop at Waitrose and John Lewis is because they work with and support young people in care and care-leavers and Gold from the Stone Foundation, my charity which supports care-leavers, specifically on Christmas day.

Lemn Sissay is speaking at the Bradford Literature Festival, 3-12 July. For more information and to book tickets, go to bradfordlitfest.co.uk