The blurb for Brand New Ancients praises Kate Tempest as one of the UK’s most innovative spoken word poets, and for once that praise seems both absolutely genuine and completely appropriate. Kate Tempest is indeed a skilled wordsmith, and Brand New Ancients showcases the full range of her lyrical talent, stylistic repertoire, and linguistic creativity. The long poem chronicles the story of two families in south London and explores everyday heroism, family life, working-class life, the human condition, and myth. In October 2020, Faber published Kae’s first work of non-fiction, On Connection, a “sonorous, humane polemic, advocating the values of sharing, authenticity and creativity over the heightened individualism, competitiveness and consumerism that dominate our society today… a powerful remedy and an urgent call for change.’ In short, this one doesn't really do a good job of living up to the whole Ancient/Modern mash-up because it really just uses the idea of the gods as a mask. There's no real depth to it. There were gods in ancient times, now we are the gods in modern times. The fact that it didn't deliver on this pretty much turned me off of the whole thing. However, it does have some qualities worth praising: In her poem, one of the main themes, which is also the question that she develops in the story, is in the first stanza: Kae Tempest's words in Brand New Ancients are written to be read aloud; the book combines poem, rap, and humanist sermon, by turns tender and fierce. Set in Southeast London, Brand New Ancients finds the mythic in the mundane. It is the story of two half-brothers, Thomas and Clive, unknown to each other -- Thomas the result of an affair between his mother and Clive's father. Tempest, with wide-ranging empathy, takes us inside the passionless marriage of Jane and Kevin -- the man who suspects Thomas is not his son, but loves him just the same -- and the neighboring home of Mary and Brian, where betrayal has not been so placidly accepted. The sons of these two households -- quiet, creative Thomas and angry, destructive Clive -- will cross paths in adolescence, their fates converging with mortal fury.

Tempest has written two more plays but says that when she began work on Brand New Ancients she was fired by frustration as well as enthusiasm for the theatre. "I didn't need to have three actors. I didn't need to show not tell. But I also brought to it things I'd learned through drama." She worked with the Battersea Arts centre over about six months "and it just grew and grew in a way that was natural and healthy. All the characters began in quite cliched shapes – it's amazing how deep those versions are within us – but taking time away from the characters let me see that these were not the people I wanted to write. Why had I put in a passive, weak female who might be saved by a man? Why was the bad boy just a bad boy? But the process allowed me to keep scrapping things and to forcibly ask the character to be more real and have more dimensions." The relationship between feminism and queer challenges the gender superiority by analyzing the relationship existing between sexual orientation, anatomical sex, and gender identity. While feminism is linked to the gender concept with reference to the female sex, most feminist theories urged that a greater inequality exists between men and women. This is demonstrated by the fact that women are considered to be a lesser or a weaker species as compared to men hence their oppression. The fine man further reiterated that the reason for such discrimination is not stated by these theorists but the intensity is so great that women would even be laid out of their workplaces due to the belief that they are a weaker species (Schiebinger et al., 2840). Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients pushes the idea of what poetry can be, telling a complete story through verse rather than serving as a collection of individual poems. It’s the kind of story that deserves to be read all in one go, preferably with tea, and lose yourself into the world of these characters whose lives intersect in ways that are recognisable to the reader. I had heard about this and loved other such Ancient-Modern fusion stuff like some of Gaiman's works or Alice Oswald's Memorial or Atwood's the Penelopiad or Anders Nilsen's Rage of Poseidon, etc.Unfortunately I just don't care. I didn't want to read a story/poem about the intertwining fates of people trying to people and people trying to be monsters. But then to have that put in my face with an ancient Greek mask on it? Maybe you can see my point now. In Brand New Ancients, Kate Tempest’s blend of the mythic and the prosaic invites us to take a good hard look at ourselves. However, the woman holding the mirror is affectionate and the poem is a tender-hearted celebration of life in south-east London – of everyday life, everywhere. Kae’s album Let Them Eat Chaos was released in 2016, alongside a volume of poetry of the lyrics (Picador), and was also nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and the Costa Prize for Poetry, respectively. Their third album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, was released in 2019 and nominated for the Ivor Novello. Since receiving the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for Brand New Ancients, Kate Tempest’s been busy, securing a Mercury Music Award nomination for the energetic, socially engaged hip-hop album, Everybody Down and publishing Hold Your Own, a reworking of the Tiresias myth. With its cross-over appeal, her performance poetry has found new audiences and has been selling out music venues. Women are taken as people who should take care of the home by taking care of their children who are around, for example, the mother is pardoning and kneeling down. The figurative language used shows the imbalance between the different genders in the family. The central theme is drawn from the literary language as they help to explain the gender analysis framework which is bound on the female characters in the society. The queer theories that have evolved have affected the gender equality in the society denying the feminist the authority to access some of the benefits. The narrator says there always has been heartbreak greed and some pains associated with the families. The literacy language helps to centralize on the theme of gender in the society and how it affects people at large (Potter et al., 100).

The conclusion seems to fit the themes of the narrative: the possibility to dip into a plethora of individual stories. Moving to years later, in the skin-crawlingly awful voice of Clive’s father, an alcoholic, abusive man now emigrated to Thailand (“out here, pension is riches”) where he’s surrounded by “men like [him]”, left wondering about what had happened to the central characters, we are distant once more to these ‘gods’, and encouraged to find our own. The literary text has been used in the poem of Kate Tempest to bring the theme of the poem and centralize the poem. For example, the poem says that the parable of the prodigal father who returned after some duration when there are more dragons which re left for sowing and the killing of the monsters. The parable is a literary language used by the narrator to show the kind of men they behave at the time (Potter et al., 100). Men are regarded as the gender which is based on the brevity and the ones who should not despise them. For example, using the gender framework it was initially thought that the men were used to collect the woods and provide fire. The framework shows the poem to contain some discriminative measures to the feminist promoting an imbalance between people in the society. Queer and feminist are common terms are terms that are commonly used to refer to gender differences. For instance, individuals would relate “queer” to homosexual. In the current situation, people use the term to refer to the individuals whose body connotations does not comply with the societal expectations and thus it can be concluded that queer explores the difference the gender identity with reference to the feminism. The section of the paper looks at how feminism, gender, and queer theories have contributed to the oppression of the specific individual groups. Show More Superhero movies are popular in the modern culture, because they give an insight of having godly powers. They are different from other, looked up to, and seen as otherworldly, despite many modern superheroes, such as Spiderman and Captain America, having normal upbringings in society. what Kate Tempest does in her poem Brand New Ancients, she makes everyone a superhero, each with their own movie. She says that the ordinary people, no matter who they are, are the gods of this world, and that we will have our own myths and stories to be told many centuries ahead. But as much as people are gods in the modern world, Tempest also wants the reader to realize that they are as much people as they are gods, that they are strong and weak at the same …show more content… Kae Tempest was the winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2012 with Brand New Ancients. They started out when they were 16, rapping at strangers on night buses and pestering MCs to let them on the mic at raves. Their theatre writing credits include Wasted for Paines Plough, Brand New Ancients for the BAC, and Glasshouse for Cardboard Citizens. They have written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Barnado’s, Channel 4 and the BBC, and worked with Amnesty International to help secondary school children write their own protest songs.

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Brand new ancient is a poetic epic that is modern, it is perfumed and written by Kate Tempest, which focusses on the lives of some young individuals in their early stage of growth. The book is a must read as it has used different literary poetic techniques and different themes with the critic to develop the central theme of gender in the poem. Gender analysis is the outside framework used to analyze the text on how some characters are oppressed in the within their individual groups under some gender roles that are defined. The poem from brand new is constrained along with the gender role confinement by the characters used. The author has used different literary texts to bring home the theme of the characters used, the figurative language, the imagery, and plot. The author says that there has always been villains and heroes. In many developing countries and nations, gender has been a subject debatable which is brought about by Kate Tempest in the poem of brand new. The story within is not a bad one, the female character solves her own problem rather than getting saved. And there's some weird visceral humanity to deal with-which is nice in an upsetting way. In the old days / the myths were the stories we used to explain ourselves. / But how can we explain the way we hate ourselves, / the things we’ve made ourselves into, / the way we break ourselves in two, / the way we overcomplicate ourselves?” (Tempest 1). What Tempest is trying to say here is that although we are gods and we are in control, the reality of it is that we are not completely in control and that knowing that fact leads to irritation. People are just trying to live their lives yet they can’t even fully control. They try to deal with themselves like a god, with their own problems and such, they forget that they are not separate with the rest of the world and their problems. And then they end up breaking ourselves by focusing on their problems instead of themselves. The people are the “brand new ancients” and yet they are not, they are also just the today people, the useless, pathetic, heroic, stressed, stupid people of today. With understanding what Tempest wanted to show with her poem, finding how she expands the topic is simpler and easier to …show more content… I feel like I'm being more direct, and hopefully more delicate," she explains. "There are things I haven't talked about in my poetry before. I am kind of nervous about that and it does feel like the taking off of a layer. Female sexuality has always been quite alienating in the way it appears in mainstream culture. So for me to be able to articulate my own version of what that is has been quite scary. But this is the stuff I want to talk about right now: my childhood, sex. And I think it's important that the love poems in the book exist with more outward-looking poems about the state of the world and education. I also have this great tenderness for the Tiresias character" – who first emerges in the very Tempestian guise of a disenchanted 15-year-old schoolboy – "for all the things that he, and she, has been, the duty that is thrust upon them and what they have to deal with." The band, whose music is similar to The Cinematic Orchestra, is illuminated on their stepped stage by light streaming in through small windows. They work well both as support for Tempest’s words and in their instrumentals. Only in the show’s refrains did they become a bit too loud for the vocal. Distress, frustration and hope were all straining through the instruments, with each character given their own clear musical voice that enhanced the storytelling.

Another facet to the narrative is that of the dangers of fame. Not a new concern, by any means, but Tempest takes it on well, panning out and tying the Cowell-led hunger for fame and fortune to her theme: “the gods are on their knees in front of false idols”. In almost a plea to return to the gods “among” rather than those “distant”, Tommy follows the convention of getting what he wishes (a job in the city as a graphic artist), to finally realise the unpleasant nature of his colleagues, all “overblown gestures like mime artists” and regret his decisions. Overall, I consider Brand New Ancients a fascinating poem that is best consumed as a performance, but one that impresses more with its style and linguistic competence than its deep insights. She enrolled at the Brit school and then took a part-time evening community education course at Goldsmiths. "There were introduction courses to politics and anthropology and in my group there was a postman from New Cross, lots of mothers with kids, real people, and the seminars would be great with everybody talking." After two years she sat in on a course about the Oedipus myth from Sophocles to the present day – "Jean Anouilh, Freud, Tiresias was in there obviously" – before transferring to a daytime degree. "It was very different. It was full of kids with their haircuts who didn't really want to contribute to the sessions. I think everyone thought I was a nightmare." Tempest says stories from the classical world were part of her childhood. "My granddad would read Roman history stories to me. My dad loved The Odyssey. And these are the sort of stories that really infiltrate – about families, and archetypal human tendencies and raw, dark emotions. The way they seek to know things about you and take things that are in your heart and embody them: they never seemed dead stories to me, they always lived and were real."

Kate Tempest

Their latest collection of poems, Running Upon the Wires, was published in September 2018 to critical acclaim (Picador). Their new play Paradise, a retelling of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, is due to be staged at the National Theatre in 2021, having been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Its play text will be published by Picador. It is the vividly drawn characters that makes this show so powerful. Tempest has a way with creating such believable people with humour and empathy (for example, Kevin, a “testament to the cavalry of men”), crafting conversations that sound authentic and paint the scenes as vividly as her narration (“prayers were not spoken in a silence like this”). Indeed, her words paint the awkwardness of youth with knowing brush-strokes, just as she also captures the flaws of their youthful reasoning (such as testing someone’s fireman skills with arson). Kae Tempest's touring show 'Brand New Ancients' was produced in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre, with a score composed by Nell Catchpole in collaboration with and performed by Kwake Bass, Raven Bush, Natasha Zielazinski and Jo Gibson.

Tempest is obviously a very talented rapper/poet. The book itself suggests it is best read out loud and it definitely has a strong performative lean. Yes, the gods are on the park bench, the gods are on the bus, / The gods are all here, the gods are in us. / The gods are timeless, fearless, fighting to be bold, / conviction is a heavy hand to hold, / grip it, winged sandals tearing up the pavement -- / you, me, everyone: Brand New Ancients. I first came across Kate Tempest’s poetry in 2018, when I bought her collection Running Upon the Wires on a whim. I think I never reviewed that collection; suffice it to say that I enjoyed it, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this review.With this dazzling modern myth in verse, Kae Tempest became the youngest winner of the prestigious Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.