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  Beneath the surface we are all connected . . .\
Award-winning poet, rapper and storyteller Kae Tempest's first work of non-fiction: a meditation on the power of creative connection'Powerful and merciful.' Ali Smith'Tempest . . . doesn't just leap off the page, but leaps into your throat and demands to be shouted all the way out.' Marlon James'[Kae's] language hits like lightning. It illuminates and it burns.' GuardianDrawing on twenty years' experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest explores how and why creativity - however we choose to practise it - can cultivate greater self-awareness and help us establish a deeper relationship to ourselves and the world.Personal, hopeful and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth.

Let Them Eat Chaos, Kate Tempest's new long poem written for live performance and heard on the album release of the same name, is both a powerful sermon and a moving play for voices. Seven neighbors inhabit the same London street, but are all unknown to each other. The clock freezes in the small hours, and one by one we see directly into their lives: lives that are damaged, disenfranchised, lonely, broken, addicted, and all, apparently, without hope. Then a great storm breaks over London, and brings them out into the night to face each other--and their own last chance to connect.Tempest argues that our alienation from one another has bred a terrible indifference to our own fate, but she counters this with a plea to challenge the forces of greed which have conspired to divide us, and mend the broken home of our own planet while we still have time. Let Them Eat Chaos is a cri de cœur and a call to action, and, both on the page and in Tempest's electric performance, one of the most powerful poetic statements of the year.

No rating because reasons. On second thought, this deserves all the stars in the world. ALSO: MANY SPOILERS EVERYWHERE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.So, I'm kind of on a short story kick especially from authors I've either never heard of- such as this one- or from authors I would give up an ovary for, such as Chimamanda. The blurb for this short had me wondering what would happen in the next seven thousand or so words.A New Yorker short story isn't the kind of story where you get fluff. It's the kind of stuff that's discussed in PhD literature classes- I think. I wouldn't really know. I abandoned my IT degree after finishing the coursework and failing a multimedia exam. Twice. This story pimpled my goose. Gooses? Geese?? Fuck it. I got goosebumps with the biggest bumps that ever goosed.Meet Margot. She works at an artsy theatre. I come from what Trump "lovingly" refers to as a shithole country where we only have ordinary theatres. I'm not entirely sure what artsy theatre is. And she meets a walking, talking paunch called Robert. They crack a few jokes. Exchange numbers and soon after they go on some kind of semi-date, Robert kisses Margot's forehead and she "develops a crush".Oy.They then proceed to go through YA angst worthy levels of misunderstandings/ miscommunications before they finally go out on their first date. Poor Robert took her to a Holocaust movie "to impress her".The date is awkward, filled with the kind of awkward silences that happen when an African mum finds out she is the one who broke the visitor's flask but she blamed you in front of the visitors leaving you aren't anywhere near ready to forgive her.Margot convinces herself that it's her fault- somehow. Sheesh.They end up going to a club and she can't get in because she's fucking twenty. The other fucker was about to go in and leave her outside but a "kind" stranger made him aware of the fact that she was abandoned on the sidewalk. When he goes back outside to her, she confesses her nervousness and he sheds his whatever-the-fuck his problem was and he kisses her. Finally. And it was bad. Really bad. \
  He kissed her then, on the lips, for real; he came for her in a kind of lunging motion and practically poured his tongue down her throat. It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing.\
The fucking fuck?And they still shag later because of motherfucking Robert's feelings.The sex was a meeeeeess. \
  When Robert was naked, rolling a condom onto a dick that was only half visible beneath the hairy shelf of his belly, she felt a wave of revulsion that she thought might actually break through her sense of pinned stasis, but then he shoved his finger in her again, not at all gently this time, and she imagined herself from above, naked and spread-eagled with this fat old man’s finger inside her, and her revulsion turned to self-disgust and a humiliation that was a kind of perverse cousin to arousal.\
Fucker of mothers!Eventually, she decides to "let herself out of the relationship" and dawdles when it comes to breaking motherfucking Robert's heart. Her roommate- thankfully- takes matters into her own hands and sends Robert a text demanding that he never texts her again. Shortly after, she spots him at a bar morosely staring at a beer and her friends escort her out. Robert then bombards her with messages asking her what he did wrong. If the guy who was with her at the bar is her new boyfriend. Culminating the one-sided conversation with Robert calling her a whore. Whoa.Cat Person went viral because these encounters seem pretty commonplace for women. Terrible sexual encounters are the order of the dates, I guess? I really wouldn't know. I once dumped a guy for kissing me by darting his tongue in and out of my mouth. This Atlantic article explains why this story is very important especially in this day and age.The narration is delightful. Easy to follow. Kinda quirky. Margot isn't particularly likeable but she's in most of us women. This story makes me realise that my ancestors had it right. They had "teachers" who would show men and women how to pleasure each other. Nowadays, sex is a taboo topic with our films classification board CEO banning condom ads because they used a little pun, I mean CUM ON!I find it also heartbreaking that Margot imagined a "perfect" future boyfriend with whom she would share her misadventures with Robert and they would laugh about it- and then she went on to tell herself that he doesn't exist. Damn. You can read it here.

Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable but unfulfilling life in Manhattan. As her husband scrambles to figure out what happened to her, Elyria hurtles into the unknown, testing fate by hitchhiking, tacitly being swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and public parks. Her risky and often surreal encounters with the people and wildlife of New Zealand propel Elyria deeper into her deteriorating mind. Haunted by her sister's death and consumed by an inner violence, her growing rage remains so expertly concealed that those who meet her sense nothing unwell. This discord between her inner and outer reality leads her to another obsession: If her truest self is invisible and unknowable to others, is she even alive? The risks Elyria takes on her journey are paralleled by the risks Catherine Lacey takes on the page. In urgent, spiraling prose she whittles away at the rage within Elyria and exposes the very real, very knowable anxiety of the human condition. And yet somehow Lacey manages to poke fun at her unrelenting self-consciousness, her high-stakes search for the dark heart of the self. In the spirit of Haruki Murakami and Amelia Gray, Nobody Is Ever Missing is full of mordant humor and uncanny insights, as Elyria waffles between obsession and numbness in the face of love, loss, danger, and self-knowledge.

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