Review: Blah’s Big Weekend: Kate Tempest

First poet up on the stage this evening as support act is simpatico Polish émigré Bohdan Piasecki (“It’s not immigration, it’s a slow invasion. Even before I moved here I was stealing your jobs!”), with an authentically delivered set of pieces inspired by memories of childhood, family roots and social change in his motherland. It must be a tough call to pave the way for a Tempest, but Bohdan goes down a storm in his own right.

Accompanied by her band, force of nature, poetic Amazon and Ted Hughes Award winner Kate Tempest first burst onto the Bristol scene two years back with her acclaimed Brand New Ancients show, in a mint piece of Mayfest programming. This evening, though, Kate stands alone on the intimate stage of the BOV Studio, tousle-haired and in her scruffy boy-girl outfit of jeans and sloppy T-shirt, her only musical accompaniment the one she keeps in her voice. And once again, the only sell-out in evidence is at the box office. “Last time I was here was with Brand New Ancients – that was fuckin’ epic! Not sure what I’m gonna do this time round…” But of course, she is completely sure of what she’s doing and it’s equally epic, only smaller.

She kicks in with a riff on the consumer society and the manipulation of self-image, some of her hallmark themes: “I’m a child of the give-me-more nation… You’re lying when you say your pain ain’t my pain, ‘cos when they hit me, you flinch,” and then follows it up with a love poem: “I found you in a pub, and had you in private… You said I had the ears of two different people, one on each side of my head, and no-one had ever said that before.”

Tempest is not scared of tackling big themes with a message, one that she delivers with passion and joy: “This whole thing thrives on us feeling incomplete. Stop craving! Hold your own! You are much smarter than they think you are. Hold your own! Let it be catching.”

She then launches into a superb longer narrative piece from her new collection Hold Your Own (which curiously doesn’t contain the title poem). It’s inspired by the Greeks again, this time by the myth of Tiresias who lived both as a man and as a woman, and who gets sucked into an argument between Zeus and Hera about whether men or women enjoy sex more – a dangerous embroilment for which he is blinded by Hera. “Zeus is shocked, appalled and impressed. He floods those empty sockets with the inner light of prophets.”

The rhythm and cadence, rhyme and near-rhyme are so alive and robust, so shot through with vitality of imagery and narrative skill, that Tempest succeeds in throwing the medium of rap into a crucible, melting it down and reforging it into pure quicksilver. And she can still get over herself when met with a torrent of applause: “Epic, innit? Shit, I should have done it at the end!”

She follows with a couple of heartfelt poems, one about growing up with her big sister Laura (“I was your little mate you dragged around…I followed you to yoofclub and was shocked at what I saw”), and another about her baby niece. Then she rounds off with some ‘poetry bingo’ where the crowd calls out random numbers, and she reads the corresponding poem from her collection.

Tempest is a wonder and a conundrum. She seems too young to have amassed all that wisdom, and looks too ordinary to be so special. She appears to be at the top of her game and yet, when you hear her in action, you know she can only get better. She must have been in the queue twice when the gods of spoken word were handing out passion and talent. Her parting shot could also one day (but not yet, not for ages) be her self-styled epitaph: “Find a thing to live for and do it till it kills you!” Incandescent.

Kate Tempest was at Bristol Old Vic  on Thursday, April 30 as part of Blah’s Big Weekend (to Sunday, May 3). For more upcoming Blahblahblah gigs, visit www.facebook.com/BlahblahblahAtBristolOldVic