Kate Tempest: ‘It’s difficult to look at words as pegs to hang a plot from’

She has written poetry, plays and an album – but the greatest challenge has been her new novel

At the beginning of an idea, there is the feeling that it could go anywhere, but it usually wants to be expressed in a particular way. I am interested in people who speak many languages; I always ask friends or acquaintances who do, if there is a moment when a thought is pure thought, before they decide in which language to express it. The answer, so far, is always no – that depending on the nature of the thought, it occurs in different languages from the moment it’s conceived. I’ve been told that thinking about love or loving feelings is easier in French than in English, and easier in Arabic than in French. One friend said that she can say things in Spanish she would never say in English.

I feel the same about the different forms I work in. Rhyming is my “mother tongue”. And I have learnt, or am in the process of learning, the “other tongues” of fiction, playwrighting and “page” poetry. It’s as if the idea knows which form it wants, the same way a thought knows which language.

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