"Ms. Tempest has an ability to write about big, metaphysical subjects in the most vernacular language." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times on HOLD YOUR OWN and BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "One of the brightest British talents around. Her 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 . drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday." - The Guardian "Tempest, she who wrestles the Classics to the Present and spits the World in a single Word, takes on the anatomy of love as told from ending to beginning in the devastating Running Upon the Wires . Journal jottings, prose poems, imagistic bursts, sonnet-like sequences, haiku, sentences that run on, run off, run over--always with that beat, that spoken beat--her poems devour us in all the forms poetry can offer. But it's never enough.
Her language is hungry. This is full body art, smack against love in all its stages, a battle to the finish--or the beginning--the epic struggle (and ecstasy) as only Kate Tempest could record." - Bob Holman "[ The Bricks that Built the Houses ] marks the arrival of a significant new voice . deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its emphatic humanity . Tempest's voice--by turns raging and tender--never falters. By the time the novel reaches its cleareyed climax, cleverly undercutting its own promised happy ending, the reader is left with the impression of a work that hums with human life." - New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "Tempest has a knack for the devastating throwaway line--a skill-honed, no doubt, from years of rapping and spoken-word performances. Her work is rich with underlinable lines .
Captivating." - New Yorker on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "Blake, Shakespeare, Eliot, the Wu-Tang Clan: when an artist's outlook on boundaries is so dizzyingly open, you long to know what happens next." - The Guardian on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "A novel that perfectly captures the modern trials and tribulations of youth and urban life in London." - BuzzFeed on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "[Tempest is] a Zadie Smith if Smith were in her 20s again . An artistic prodigy . [Her] captivating The Bricks That Built the Houses is rich in detail, clever in plot and filled with characters who live on the edge but never quite give up." - Shelf Awareness on THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES "Thrillingly good . Ms.
Tempest stitches together words with such animate grace that language acquires an almost tactile quality, and the drama she unfolds . soars to operatic dimensions. [An] hypnotically persuasive vision." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times on BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "Breathe[s] new life into old classic forms; a long poem about us and the gods that's all high-kicking verve and long-range understanding. I loved its vision, powerful and merciful." - Ali Smith, The Observer, on BRAND NEW ANCIENTS "This feels a lot like Patti Smith here, in massive wordplay. The sorrows, loss, and rage are the same; and you have to admire the inner beauty coming to surface in serious ways; and more than that, applaud a young artist on a marvelous occasion for driving a dream to the fullest extent just for the flight of it." - Washington Review of Books on LET THEM EAT CHAOS.