British artist Kae Tempest brings so much honesty to his work that it can almost feel abrasive. In a time where irony is maybe only just moving off trend, Tempest’s sincere telling of love and pain, of belonging, of life, is the antithesis of any kind of small talk lyrics that may make a billboard track. Instead, he doesn’t shy away from the honesty that can feel awkward, and at City Recital Hall during Vivid Sydney, he invited a rare and loving space for people to be and experience their music in the utmost beauty.
Creating Art For Vulnerability
2 July, 2026
Words by:
Sarah Palmieri
Kae Tempest brought his singular blend of poetry, music and spoken word to City Recital Hall for Vivid Sydney 2026. In a culture that still struggles to hold sincerity, he held the room completely.
Lyrics from Grace
“Make love. Let me be love, let me be loving. Let me give love, receive love, and be nothing but love, in love and for love and with love.”
“It was Grace.
Stunned by the last light of the sun.
Swimming in a green sea as deep as a drum.
There are things I must record, must praise.
There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze.
Of this beautiful life, if this beautiful life.”
Tempest, a trans man, grew up in Brockley, South East London, one of five children, raised in what he’s described as a shitty part of town but a nice house where there was always food. He left school at 16 for the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, cut his teeth performing at open mic nights at a hip-hop record shop in Soho, and graduated in English Literature from Goldsmiths. He has been a force of creativity and activism in the industry, and the LGBTQIA+ community runs as a thread through all of it. Coming out as non-binary in 2020 and as a trans man in 2025, his most recent album Self Titled is described as a love letter to his younger self, to London, and to the trans community. He has written plays, poetry collections, albums and non-fiction, most recently his novel Having Spent Life Seeking, which featured on Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, and won the Ted Hughes Award, the most prestigious prize in British poetry.
He is in no short supply of work, and of a brilliant standard. And yet when looking at the recognition, or purely at the audience Tempest gathers, it still feels underground rather than mainstream. You might think this only speaks to the kind of gentleness our culture is ready to receive, one that isn’t packaged up like Tempest.
Although it may be a shame that this kind of beauty can’t reach a broader audience, on that night, in the theatre, with Kae singing, speaking, living under warm light beside Sydney hip-hop artist leecerti, it made for a kind of safety that could let the true essence of their work breathe, let it be enjoyed by the audience without judgement.
“That was the best show I’ve ever seen in my life,” a very chicly dressed grey-haired woman said in the line to the bathroom.
Lyrics from Hold Your Own
“Time is an onslaught. Love is a mission.
We work for vocation until in remission.
We wish we’d had patience and given more time to our children. Feel each decision that you make.
Make it, hold it.
Hold your own.”
“Every pain, every grievance,
every stab of shame,
every day spent with a demon in your brain giving chase
hold it.
Know the wolves that hunt you.
In time, they will be dogs that bring your slippers.”
“Love them right and you will feel them kiss you when they come to bite.”
Whether it be attending a poetry night, a spoken word show, or a theatre performance, it is the kind of art that asks for an audience to sit in what may feel uncomfortable. To be brave and lean into a kind of honesty that may be reserved for a journal, a therapy session, or no kind of space at all.
Tempest is gathering that all over the world, connecting people through softness in a way that is completely rare to compare. They have brought the alternative into a more mainstream light, and perhaps that is where it does its work best. With openness, it doesn’t judge a newcomer but allows them to listen in slowly, and envelop them in the lyricism, in the artistry of someone who has been bold enough to share their own.
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