Hold Your Own

Kate Tempest, winner of the Ted Hughes Prize for Brand New Ancients and widely regarded as the UK's leading spoken word poet, has produced a new poem-sequence of electrifying power. Based on the myth of the blind prophet Tiresias, Hold Your Own is a riveting tale of youth and experience, sex and love, wealth and poverty, community and alienation. Walking in the forest one morning, a young man disturbs two copulating snakes — and is punished by the goddess Hera, who turns him into a woman. This is only the beginning of his journey ... Weaving elements of classical myth, autobiography and social commentary, Tempest uses the story of the gender-switching, clairvoyant Tiresias to create four sequences of poems: 'childhood', 'manhood', 'womanhood' and 'blind profit'. The result is a rhythmically hypnotic tour de force — and a hugely ambitious leap forward for one of the UK's most talented and compelling young writers.

• Author
• Kae Tempest

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 111

• Publisher
• Picador

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 978-1-4472-4121-8

• EAN
• 9781447241218

• Genres
• poetry, mythology, fiction, lgbt, queer, fantasy, retellings, feminism, contemporary

• Release date
• 2014