Running upon the wires

Running Upon The Wires is Kate 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 she also tells us what happens in between, when the heart is pulled both ways at once. Running Upon The Wires is a departure from Tempest's 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 is no less a direct and unflinching observer of matters of the heart than she is 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. 'Whether on stage or on the page, her language hits like lightning. It illuminates and it burns.' Guardian