大象传媒

In a new podcast for 大象传媒 Radio 4, The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed, Simon Armitage talks to guests about life, language and music. As he translates The Owl and the Nightingale, a long Middle English poem in which the two birds debate many things, Simon asks guests to both help him with the poem and to distract him from it.

Simon is joined in the writing shed at the bottom of his garden by Kate Tempest – poet, musician, novelist, playwright and more – to discuss rapping, writing under pressure and her beloved Malamute, Murphy.

Here are 10 things we learned about the spoken word artist…

For her entire life, Kate has lived in the same bit of South London. But for just over a year she moved, with her partner and their dog, to “the middle of nowhere” in the French foothills of the Pyrenees. “It was absolutely bonkers,” says the writer. It was a massive contrast to the Lewisham streets she knows like the back of her hand, and a “huge culture shock… I had to get used to not being afraid of staring at a hill and seeing no humans.”

2. She writes best under pressure

“I usually write very well under great pressure,” says Kate, whether that’s time pressure, or the pressure of projects. She’s learnt how to squeeze out a bit of solitude when she’s touring with the band. “You just find a way of getting some space,” says the writer. And although she had lots of time in France, it didn’t make her any more productive. “I feel like you use as much time as you’ve got. So, if you’ve got five minutes you make it work. If you’ve got a month it takes a month. But you end up with the same amount of stuff.”

3. Her initial love was music

Kate’s work encompasses a multitude of genres, but music was her first love. “Music was the thing really,” says the artist. “The thing that I wanted to make, the thing that I dreamed to be able to do, was music. And then I discovered poetry and I kind of fell into it.” She admits that she didn’t go out trying to be a spoken word artist. “I didn’t even know what that was. And I think that’s often why it feels a bit weird when people describe me that way.”

4. She feels really lucky

Kate has found success in so many different creative areas: as a musician, a novelist, a poet and more. “It’s a remarkable thing,” she says. “I feel extremely lucky, especially because so many other people that I knew growing up, who were also extremely creative, haven’t been able to do this for their career.” She says she always carries in her heart the knowledge that this is a “huge luxury and a massive privilege.”

5. She went to the Brit school – but dropped out

Kate started out playing classical guitar, and she got into the Brit school for performing arts (whose alumni include Adele and Amy Winehouse) to study music. “Recording techniques was the thing that I was kind of excited about. I wanted to learn how a studio worked, because I’d never been in one,” says the musician. But with other stuff going on in her life, she failed to make the most of the opportunity and ended up leaving. It was during that time that she discovered rapping, however, and really found her voice. “That was a really vibrant time for my creativity, but it was happening outside of college.”

6. Being a female rapper helped her get noticed

Hip hop was a male-dominated industry when she started out, but she wouldn’t change it. “It was an amazing education in how to hold my own,” says Kate. “I’m thankful for every single time that it was difficult because it was just so energising… I had to know what it was that I was trying to say, because it was so hard to be heard and I think that’s a really good training.” Creating and performing within a male-centric genre also helped her to get noticed: “It enabled me to stand out.”

“I didn’t know how to get in the music industry,” says Kate. “I was getting demos turned away left, right and centre. We couldn’t get a record label to put out Everybody Down. We really tried,” she laughs. And it was the same for poetry. “People in the publishing world… they were not interested.” So she self-published a book, continued to do spoken word performances and put on events herself – until the editor at Picador happened to attend her gig at The Old Vic. A publishing deal soon followed.

When she鈥檚 travelling from venue to venue overnight Kate's Malamute, Murphy, helps her feel less disorientated.

8. Poetry makes her feel young

“I feel reverential of poetry when it’s done incredibly well, and I feel like such a novice,” says the writer. “I feel like I have so much to learn.” Despite her experience, she says the genre continues to make her “feel so young all the time.” “As much as I feel confident in my ideas musically… for me poetry is this great landscape where I’m still trying to get my head around how I can dare to take another step.”

9. She’s had a panic attack on stage

“What I gain from performance is huge,” says Kate. Starting out, she couldn’t wait to share new verses with friends, and a passion for performing grew from there. “It was all about this connection I had, this huge desire, not only to write but to speak, to be heard,” she says. Now, when she’s on stage recalling text, sometimes for an hour and a half at a time, she goes into a certain state: “It’s bizarre what happens. It does this thing to my entire body; it does something to my brain.” But it’s tough too. “The flip side of it is that it’s terrifying, it’s exhausting,” she admits. On this latest tour she even had a panic attack on stage. “It definitely takes a toll on me,” says the artist.

10. She takes her dog on tour with her

Kate has an Alaskan Malamute called Murphy. “He comes with me everywhere,” says Kate. “He’s been on tour with me.” When she’s travelling from venue to venue overnight, he helps her feel less disorientated. “You can just end up getting caught in this bubble of the never-ending show, and you don’t really know where you are, but with a dog on board you wake up in the morning and you have to go for a big walk,” she says.

He’s named after her favourite Samuel Beckett novel because when he was a puppy, he had markings round his eyes that looked like the author’s spectacles. “But I couldn’t call him Samuel Beckett in the park in Lewisham,” she says. “I would have been absolutely laughed out of town!”