Poet Tempest takes Belfast by storm.
Kate Tempest is a force of nature. Small, wild, feisty, bright – very bright – she looks half of her thirty years.
Yet in that short time on Planet Earth she has not only broken through the bastion of academic barrier to win the prestigious Ted Hughes Award for ‘Brand New Ancients’ (an epic narrative poem with orchestral manoeuvres), she was also nominated for the Mercury Prize for her 2014 album ‘Everybody Down’ (Big Dada).
We don’t usually cover Spoken Word for Folk and Tumble but this is Kate Tempest so it’s different. And she’s different. Tirelessly touring with her band Sound of Rum, performing at major festivals, writing plays, releasing albums, poetry collections, being commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, rapping, and now, promoting her first full novel – ‘The Bricks That Built The Houses’ – the reason she is here in Belfast for the Book Festival.
The Crescent’s Cube is sold out. The audience is an assorted rattle bag of all ages – it appears there is no Kate Tempest type. Her talent is outrageous, like her good fortune, to fearlessly scale heights with the sheer force of words and expression that enable her to take flight. Opening with a brief tribute to her muse, the misfit William Blake, her rhythmic, rapid rhetoric takes her into an almost trance-like state, before snapping right back into this time and place.
Place matters. Space matters. Character matters. This is contemporary London – she draws her inspirations from the people, places and things that seep into her consciousness, she explains to our own home grown Jan Carson. Words tumble, bubble out – she is articulate, effervescent and witty. She entertains. And yet she seems so childlike and innocent. Apparently unburdened by her inherent, innate wisdom, she has an uncanny ability to spin and weave a matter-of-fact, wry and incisive commentary on early 21st-century society. I suspect someday, maybe not too far from now, Tempest’s canon will be on the curriculum.
“It’s gorge and purge”, she explains – gorge on life, then purge it out via poetry.
Her first love was hip-hop at fifteen. She got into rapping and found the guts to perform as a teenager. Describing hip hop as a sacred place, she recognises thetrance-likee state of rhythmic transcendence, the holy alliance of music and lyrics. She demonstrates when she wraps up the event with a demonstration of the art that got her noticed to begin with – a dramatic, theatrical example that illustrates precisely why hip-hop can be “high art” (whatever that is), drawing on Shakespearian references, “nourishing the soul with holy mysticism”. As she puts it “I’m just the vessel”. Neither ego nor id, she just gets it, naturally.
The Cube is certainly a space for female creative energy tonight – the first night of Belfast Book Festival.
Following the mighty Tempest are three female spoken word artists under the Red Pill banner. Representing Belfast, Derry and Dublin – Alice McCullough, Abby Oliveira and Erin Fornoff. First among equals is Red Pill co-ordinator Alice McCullough. Alice’s voice is always distinctive. A soft lyrical lilt, feminine and gentle, disguising the power of the message. In this case, a Freudian throw back to a school yard memory – how a seemingly miniscule event from early childhood can violently impact the psyche and have far-reaching consequences into later life. Delivered with humility and humour, just like her follow up poem dedicated to Terri Hooley – a lyrical ballad titled ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ (a tribute to that memorable night at the Limelight, near New Year 2014, when the great man wasn’t well enough to make his own party, bless).
Erin Flintoff, originally from North Carolina, now living in Dublin, has poems so rich in imagery, vibrancy and tone to take us on her journey to meet the characters, colours, jazz sounds of New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi.
Flintoff’s ‘The Opposite Of Thank You’ humorously addresses a particular, nameless sleeze bag from the literary world – leaving the audience guessing – “whoever can she mean?”
Abby Oliviera is just back from her Australian Tour. She is an incredible performance poet – with or without music. American Candy shows her skill and majesty in full throttle, as does her letter-form reply to the open letter by rapist Brock Turners father. Powerfully and painfully delivered.
However, the herbalist in me particularly liked Oliviera’s ‘Dandelion’ – her stage craft and delivery is not only fine-tuned and engaging, she is thoroughly captivating.
Performance poetry or “the spoken word” may not be everyone’s cup of tea – but this joyful, witty, intelligent evening of back-to-back poetry and conversation by the goddesses of the genre is to the credit of the Belfast Book Festival on its opening evening.