Brand New Ancients

Product Information

The scope is epic, but the drama has the sort of exquisite fragility that only comes from brilliant writing about the most ordinary of souls. This is a very short read, with stanzas musing on the constancy of the human condition and how we really haven’t come so far from the days when Zeus and Hera might have walked among us. I really wanted to like this idea but couldn’t help being a bit disappointed in the end because I felt that the two sides of it – the ancient myths and the variations of modern-day heroism – were only loosely connected.

She deftly weaves together two generations of modern families, telling stories of love, betrayal, anger and revenge with a minimum of verbiage. Tempest uses rhythm, rhymes, different lyrical styles (including rap) and other stylistic devices to great effect. A fascinating idea that is also well executed by Kae Tempest as the poem shows how these modern day people have commonalities with the ancient gods through their actions and emotions.Beyond that, the through narrative is utterly devoid of originality and reads like a social services manual.

I like her insights into modern urban life, and applying that epic vibe ("the Gods are in the toilets having unprotected sex". I've never, in some seriousness, felt the absence of international socialism, or failing that just some vision or abstraction or sense of possibility, more. You would never know, reading this, that London was an international city; the prospect of multiple cultures never darkens this doorstep. I really like Greek Mythology and loved how Kate played around with it, finding examples of ancient God’s in everyday people. Un'umanità, quella di Tempest, primordiale e barbara che ha forti legami con l'arcaico e con l'antichità.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. And I have to add that reading this book with the author reading it + the music was excellent, it added a real tension, an authentic atmosphere. It's a modern "Under Milkwood" and I am playing it to everyone who visits and will be using it with my students at school and I'm playing it over and over again.

One note up front - while I am sure that the prose is powerful on the page alone, I listened to the audio production. Fuck me, but I'd rather be watching "Downton": at least no-one pretends that that anti-socialist fantasy is contemporary. The main story running through the poem, telling the story of a group of young people growing up in modern times, one the product of an affair, one unloved by his father, getting in trouble, their lives spiralling out of control and becoming more violent is brilliantly executed. Brand New Ancients is a narrative poem about two neighboring families and their intertwined experiences. Tempest sings of the extraordinary contained within the ordinary in language that is sometimes elevated but more often the vernacular used by the characters she has created.Her poetry flows in a way that translates to the page extremely well but works even better when spoken aloud (as the poem should be, the title page advises).