Brand New Ancients

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Born to an father who cheated, drank too much, and would always yell at him and his mother, he learned that if ever needed to do something, it had to be done with violence to be heard (Tempest). He never knew the life of a normal childhood was. And he grew up with what he saw. Tempest give us an insight as he grew up: 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. 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. I was drawn to this narrative poem by the cover – Ancient Greeks toting briefcases and smart phones. That’s right down my alley. I understand Ms. Tempest is an accomplished musician as well as a poet, and this short book has a lyrical, musical quality. The preface notes that it is to be read aloud. I can see why. The tone and performance elements remind me of the Beat poetry of the 1950s and 60s. “Winged sandals tearing up the pavement” is a line that one can imagine from Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

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. 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. 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… 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." The one thing Tempest did not manage to achieve quite so successfully, in my opinion, was the ‘plot’ of her poem and especially its links to ancient heroism. The story of Mary and Brian, Jane and Kevin, and their two sons is dramatic enough to carry the reader through the poem, but it is, in the end, a superficial one. Kate Tempest connects this very familiar tale of love, disillusionment, violence, betrayal, and personal tragedy with the idea of everyday heroism, which she understands as analogous to ancient Greek myth. Tempest’s gods and heroes are the everyday characters, the little people who keep getting up and keep carrying on despite all odds. 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. An ancient god’s name here, a examination of modern godhood there, but overall much of this analogy, and especially of Tempest’s ancient inspirations, remained unexplored. It is entirely possible that this issue is one I only noticed because I read the poem instead of listening to it being performed; I might not have paid so much attention to the narrative structure otherwise.

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. 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. 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.

In her poem, one of the main themes, which is also the question that she develops in the story, is in the first stanza: 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. 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.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.

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. 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. Read if you like: Kate Tempest’s other works (including her music), Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer, spoken word poetry 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. 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.

Reviews

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 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). 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. 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."This the paper looks at how feminism, gender, and queer theories have contributed to the oppression of the specific individual groups. While feminism is linked to the concept of gender with reference to the female sex, most feminist theories urged that a greater inequality exists between men and women (Potter et al., 100). The benefit of the production process goes to the ruling class who then pays the workers based on the proceeds. Since in a small economy labor is, in conclusion, the paper has looked at how the female gender has been affected due to the oppression that comes along with the conditions they are subjected to. The literacy language has been used to come up with the theme of gender in the poem starting from the characters to the plot of the analysis. The analysis shows that men are regarded as the prodigal father due to the time they take while in the battle as women remain to nurse and even eating raw food from their children Work cited 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. Potter, John, and Julian McDougall. ‘Porous Expertise and Powerful Knowledge.’ Digital Media, Culture, and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017. 83-106.