Interview: Kate Tempest

Teddy Ackery

I decided for my extended project to write about the poet/writer/rapper Kate Tempest, whose work I have been deeply interested in for the past couple of years. I e-mailed her management with several questions for Kate, and to my amazement she actually replied. I felt these answers should be shared as they are thought-provoking, and provide a deeper insight into her work. I highly recommend checking out any of her music or poetry if you are interested by this subject matter.

Why do you feel ancient mythology needs to be re-explored, such as in your work Brand New Ancients? 

For me, the old stories are helpful because they encourage us to situate ourselves more fully in the present. They remind us of the timelessness of the human experience. I find great comfort in remembering that we all stand on a line that goes way back to the beginning.

But I don't think they need to be re-explored. They don't need anything. To be honest with you, I just loved to read the old stories as a child and as a teenager, and when I started writing my own, they were there in the background. My internal landscape was populated with people I knew and loved from where I grew up and also the characters from the old stories that I used to read all the time. And that's why my earlier work especially is populated with so many references to mythology and South East London.

Do you consider Brand New Ancients to be a piece of theatre, or an epic poem, or somewhat of a middle ground? 

It began its life as a long poem, accompanied by music which occasionally it locked in with. It was written to be told to an audience, live. I couldn't perform it forever, as it was a taxing performance and I wasn't prepared for it, so now it lives as an audio recording, or as a poem in a book. But in it's beginnings, it was intended to be shared live. [You can find a recording of Brand New Ancients as performed at the Battersea Arts Centre here]

Do you consider your music to be poetry? 

Sometimes. But it isn't as straight forward as that. I write song lyrics. They are poetic by nature but they are not poems. Although occasionally, they are poems. Very confusing! My poetry is musical, highly rhythmic, but it is not music until it goes through some sort of a transformation and becomes music. That happens when I write it into music or bring it to life in a live setting, in a musical performance.

Poetry can become music, music can become poetry, but they are not automatically the same thing. I don't think of my albums as poetry albums. I think of them as music. Even my most recent album, the book of traps and lessons, which pretty much everyone else in the world thinks of as a spoken word album, I think of it as music!

Do you believe that your poetry collections and your music are essentially the same form of literature? 

No, I think they are different forms. An example of this is when the same text is presented across two forms. Let Them Eat Chaos for example is an album, but it's also published as a long form poem, with slight textual variation form the album. The same work, different forms! It becomes a different text, because the experience of engaging with it is different. The form is different.

Which work by other contemporary poets are you most interested by? 

I like lots of people's work. I listen and read all the time. Recently I'm listening to Sampa the Great, Wiki, Jam Baxter, Bill Withers, Rapsody. I'm reading lots of nonfiction though, not much poetry. Oliver Sacks Musicophilia.

I'm always reading the classics, there's always something I've missed. I've been reading the book of Ezekiel. I love E.L Doctorow. None of these people are contemporary poets though. The last contemporary poet I read and loved was Jericho Brown. Or Ali Cobby-Eckerman.

Many people would consider the lyrics in your music to be very poetic. Is there an intentional reason as to why you released them as music, with a backing track, instead of just as part of a separate printed poetry collection? 

Because for me, the lyrics on my albums are music. Not poems. The poems in the collections resonate differently. I wouldn't speak them over music. I suppose I could speak them over music, but I didn't write them with that intention.

My creativity began, seriously began, through telling rhymes as a teenager. I was making music with my friends. My contribution to the music was lyrical. I began as lyricist, I cut my teeth a a lyricist and I discovered the power of my language as a lyricist, I still think of myself that way. I have a musical anchor at the root of all of my writing.

What characteristics do you believe a piece of writing has to have to be considered a poem? 

I don't know. It depends who is considering. An academic institution? A poetry editor? The audience at a gig? The poet themselves? Different people will have different requirements and expectations of what makes a poem a poem. Which is why there is so much snobbery in the poetry world(s).

For me, a poem is a map towards re-experiencing a moment, or re-animating a feeling. The qualifying characteristics of a poem, for me personally, are usually the tone, the momentum and whether or not I feel a clear sense of the poet's truth. Am I brought closely into the experience of another person and does it aide me in accessing my own experiences more clearly? Am I able, through engaging with the poem, to land more fully in life? Also, for me, a poem is something impressive. Beautiful. Carefully wrought. I like to be able to feel the technique without necessarily being able to see it.

Which other poets/spoken word artists/ musicians do you feel release or have released work that is most similar to your own? Are there any who you feel really helped to form the kind of work that you release now? 

Mos Def. Gza. Gil Scott-Heron. Nina Simone. Alice Coltrane. John Coltrane. Bob Dylan. Leonard Cohen. Lauryn Hill. Outkast. Saul Williams. Chester P. Rumi. William Blake. Yeats. James Joyce. Janis Joplin. Nirvana. Pharoe Monch. Gravediggaz. D Double E. Confucius MC. MF Doom. Bahamadia.

Why do you think poetry is an important form of literature in the modern day? 

I don't necessarily think poetry is an important form of literature. I just think it's a useful human tool, which helps us access the infinite, and at the same time helps us access the most routine particularities of our lives on earth.