'Tempest collection feels like a game-changer. Tempest has forged their own voice,unlike anything else in the mainstream poetry world'- Independent on Sunday
Hold Your Own,Kae Tempest's first full-length collection for Picador is an ambitious,multi-voiced work based around the mythical figure of Tiresias. This four-part work follows him through his transformations from child,man and woman to blind prophet; through this structure,Tempest holds up a mirror to contemporary life in a direct and provocative way rarely associated with poetry.
A vastly popular and accomplished performance poet,Tempest commands a huge and dedicated following on the performance and rap circuit.
Brand New Ancients,also available from Picador,won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and has played to packed concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic.
Publisher: Pan MacmillanISBN: 9781447241218Number of pages: 128Weight: 198 gDimensions: 197 x 153 x 12 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'One of the brightest British talents around. (Tempest's) spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry,the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart'- The Guardian
'In mesmerising rhyme and galloping rhythm,their passion for the classics collides with urban street slang,social observation,consumerism and the concerns of contemporary youth'- The Observer
'Kae Tempest proves poetry has a place in pop...(Tempest) has made history,transcending the line between poetry and music'- The Telegraph
'Dazzling wordsmithery... As anyone who has seen them perform will know,they don't just paint pictures with words when they performs,they paint fireworks in the night sky'- Claire Allfree,Metro
'A winning wielder of words... The common thread through Tempest's diverse work is their love of words. In mesmerising rhyme and galloping rhythm,their passion for the classics collides with urban street slang,social observation,consumerism and the concerns of contemporary youth'- Michael Hogan,The Observer
'Hold Your Own is intellectually as well as emotionally exhilarating,yet unafraid to challenge the purveyors of wilful obscurity... With their poems about change and growth and passion,this girl is going places - and I'll be glad to go with'- The Daily Mail
'Their opening poem here is the longest,an updating of the story of Tiresias,and is both politically and emotionally stark,while the rest explore the human passion with a refreshing toughness'- Sunday Herald
'Tempest collection feels like a game-changer. Tempest has forged theirown voice,unlike anything else in the mainstream poetry world'- Independent on Sunday
'Tempest follows her Ted Hughes Prize-winning Brand New Ancients with a bold retelling of the myth of Tiresias. In a voice at once inviting and challenging,erudite and incongruous,the 28-year-old south Londoner confirms her position as one of literature's most remarkable millennials'- Financial Times
'Like the great Philip Larkin,Tempest has an ability to write about big,metaphysical subjects in the most vernacular language,while conjuring a sense of contemporary English life with a handful of chiseled lines . . .They demonstrates a knack - in both Brand New Ancientsand Hold Your Own - for being able to shuttle easily back and forth between the mundane and the mythic,the banal and philosophical,and for using their pictorial imagination to sear specific images into the reader's mind'- Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times
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