6
Bido Lito! February 2015
Words: Paddy Hughes / @paddyhughes89
Photography: India Cranks
Since
she
first
performed poetry
as a sixteen-year-old in
a dingy hip hop store on Carnaby
Street, KATE TEMPEST has not only taken the underground art
scene by storm, but has achieved the kind of crossover success
that only comes around once in a generation. Over the last
fifteen years she has written plays and poetry collections, toured
with her band, Sound Of Rum, supported Benjamin Zephaniah
and Scroobius Pip, and has even started writing a novel. In 2014
she finally became a household name when her debut album
Everybody Down was nominated for The Mercury Prize. Ahead of
her upcoming gig at The Kazimier (18th February), Tempest kindly
took some time out from a writing retreat to speak to Liverpool’s
own slam poetry prince, Paddy Hughes, about her fantastically
diverse career.
Bido Lito!: Hello Kate. You’re involved in music, poetry and
literature but what came first?
Kate Tempest: It was music that was my first way into being
creative. I just fell into the other things after a few years of writing
lyrics and being in bands and mucking around with lyrics. As for
the poetry thing… that was kind of an accident. I just wrote lyrics
that I already had to beats and music, and performed them at
poetry gigs. Now poetry for me is a very separate thing to my
music, but at the beginning it was all the same because I just
had lyrics.
BL!: For a lot of musicians in Liverpool, the city, for better or for
worse, becomes an early focal point when writing. Did that apply
to you growing up in London?
KT: When you grow up in a city like Liverpool or London, it’s
such an intense environment because it’s so full of people… so
many people and so much influence to hold in your head at one
time. When you’re a kid and you experience a darker side to your
city it leaves its mark; but so do the other parts, like the access
you have to creativity through community recording centres. For
me, your city gives you so much oxygen. I love London; it’s such
a big part of who I am. Like, if I’d grown up in the countryside I
would be a completely different artist.
bidolito
bidolito.co.uk
BL!: When did it become apparent
that you were going to make a living
from music and writing? Is that what
you always wanted to be or did you
have different aspirations when you
were a lot younger?
KT: I actually wanted to be a vet when I
was really little because I loved animals, but $)