Divisible by Itself and One

I want to sing you early songs. Go deeper. I want to take you back where you began, Find the scraps of you you hid in secret And bring them back to life beneath my tongue.

Divisible by Itself and One is the powerful new collection from our foremost truth-teller Kae Tempest. Ruminative, wise, with a newer, more contemplative and metaphysical note running through, it is a book engaged with the big questions and the emotional states in which we live and create. Some of the poems experiment with form, some are free, and yet all are politically and morally conscious. Divisible by Itself and One is also a book about human form, the body as boundary and how we are read by the world. Taking its bearings - and title - from the prime number, Divisible by Itself and One is concerned, ultimately, with integrity: how to live in honest relationship with oneself and others.

“Tempest delivers their thoughts gorgeously, rhythmically, but also with clarity and a fierce grace” Observer

© 2023 Picador (Audiobook): 9781529073102

Release date

Audiobook: 27 April 2023