Kate Tempest, shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize, at Exeter Poetry Festival Friday October 3rd 2014

The prodigiously talented Kate Tempest, one of the bookies’ favourites to win this year’s Mercury Music Prize, is performing at the Exeter Poetry Festival – Friday 3rd October, 7pm Exeter Central Library. Tickets are now SOLD OUT! For other events at Exeter Poetry Festival, 30th September to 5th October, buy your tickets here.

Modern day poet, spoken word artist, rapper and recording talent of extraordinary soul and grit, The Guardian described her as “One of the brightest British talents around” and The New York Times last year summed up her stage performance as “gorgeous streams of words . . . a story so vivid it’s as if you had a state-of-the-art Blu-Ray player stuffed in your brain . . .”

Her performance career started when she was 16 rapping on London night buses and open mic raves. In a decade she has amassed three plays and a novel and has established herself as a poet and recording artist extraordinaire. Her work includesBalance, her first musical release album with band Sound of Rum, Everything Speaks in its Own Way her first collection of poems, the critically acclaimed plays Wasted, Glasshouse and Hopelessly Devoted, and Brand New Ancients, her self-performed epic poem to a live score which won the Ted Hughes prize 2013 and the Herald Angel at Edinburgh Fringe.

After hearing the news of her nomination, Kate said: “I feel extremely excited, shocked and proud. In a way it’s a similar feeling [to winning the Ted Hughes prize] but it’s also different, because poetry is a different world. I used to watch the Mercury prize on the telly when I was 16, wondering when it would be my time, so this is really special.”

Kate’s most recent album Everybody Down was released in May 2014 on Big Dada records. Her new single, Circles, is out now.