Let Them Eat Chaos, Kate Tempest's new long poem written for live performance and heard on the album release of the same name, is both a powerful sermon and a moving play for voices. Seven neighbours inhabit the same London street, but are all unknown to each other. The clock freezes in the small hours, and, one by one, we see directly into their lives: lives that are damaged, disenfranchised, lonely, broken, addicted, and all, apparently, without hope. Then a great storm breaks over London, and brings them out into the night to face each other - and their last chance to connect.
'In terms of visibility, Kate Tempest is currently way ahead of her performance-poet peers. Out on her own, she sounds like a woman who knows exactly what she's doing' -- Alexis Petridis Guardian
Author
About Kate Tempest
Poet, rapper, playwright and novelist Kate Tempest is from south London. Her epic poem Brand New Ancients won the Ted Hughes Prize for poetry in 2013. The following year she was named by the Poetry Society as a Next Generation Poet. In the same week her debut solo album, Everybody Down, a narrative driven hip hop record involving the same characters as the novel, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize 2014. Her most recent poetry collection is the acclaimed Hold Your Own. The Bricks that Built the Houses is her first novel.
