The leading poet of her generation returns with a deeply personal third collection, Running Upon The Wires.

Whether on stage or on the page, her language hits like lightning. It illuminates and it burns

- Guardian

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 also tells us what happens in between, when the heart is pulled both ways at once.

Running Upon The Wires is, in a sense, a departure from her 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's 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.

In terms of visibility, Kate Tempest is currently way ahead of her performance-poet peers. Out on her own, she sounds like a woman who knows exactly what she's doing

- Observer

One of the brightest British talents around. [Tempest's] spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart

- Guardian

Dazzling wordsmithery. . . As anyone who has seen her perform will know, she doesn't just paint pictures with words when she performs, she paints fireworks in the night sky

- Metro