Running Upon the Wires

By: Kae Tempest

Narrated by: Kae Tempest

Running Upon The Wires is Kae Tempest’s first book of free-standing poetry since the acclaimed Hold Your Own. In a beautifully varied series of formal poems, spoken songs, fragments, vignettes and ballads, Tempest charts the heartbreak at the end of one relationship and the joy at the beginning of a new love; but also tells us what happens in between, when the heart is pulled both ways at once.

Running Upon The Wires is, in a sense, a departure from their previous work, and unashamedly personal and intimate in its address – but will also confirm Tempest’s role as one of our most important poetic truth–tellers: it will be no surprise to readers to discover that she’s no less a direct and unflinching observer of matters of the heart than they are of social and political change. Running Upon The Wires is a heartbreaking, moving and joyous book about love, in its endings and in its beginnings.

Critic reviews

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 (Observer)

One of the brightest British talents around. [Tempest's] 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

Dazzling wordsmithery. . . As anyone who has seen her perform will know, she doesn't just paint pictures with words when she performs, she paints fireworks in the night sky

Tempest’s first book of free-standing poetry since 2014’s Hold Your Own is a whirlwind of formal poems, spoken songs, ballads and fragments. Capturing the total loss at the breakdown of a beloved relationship or the dangers of catching a song on the radio that can floor you in an instant, Tempest uses words like a time traveller taking the reader into fragments of their own lives, successes and heartbreaks. Read and lose yourself in a total adventure.

A cathartic and deeply moving read - a go-to for the love-stricken and heartbroken

Reading from the page, without accompaniment, allows her word-craft to shine.

An honest, witty, mosaic-like view of love in the 21st century. (Roger Cox)