Posted Tuesday February 2nd 2010
by Nikesh Shukla

This isn't a book review of the supremely talented poet Kate Tempest's new CD/book Broken Herd. It's a celebration. A celebration with a suggestion that what Kate Tempest and independent record shop, Pure Groove have done is perhaps the future for books. They've brought back the desirable collectable limited edition book.

Firstly, who is Kate Tempest? She's the name to drop when it comes to spoken word at the moment. Her band, The Sound of Rum, has recently signed to Sunday Best, she has graced stages from Glastonbury to Latitude to Battersea Arts Centre and the Big Chill. For someone so young, she comes highly respected and highly recommended. She is loud, quiet, jagged and emotional. She will break your heart, with stories of lost living and yearning love, with tirades against everything from fakery to flippancy. She is the poet's poet, a wordsmith steeped in Wordsworth and Shakespeare as much as she is in MF DOOM and Gza and other rappers. We hope to interview her in coming weeks so we'll get her to tell you more about what she does.

In the meantime, she has, along with Pure Groove, created 300 limited boxsets containing recordings of her immense hypnotic poetry on CD, recorded live at the end of last year, an illustrated book of lyrics (as a sort of poetry book), a handmade quill and some tattoos, all lovingly collected in a beautiful box. It's an impressive package, certainly a desirable item. I bought one over the weekend and it got me thinking as to whether this was the future of books. Whether we would start to see e-books alongside cheaper paperbacks and high-end desirable collectables, like Kate Tempest's boxset. It would certainly make sense. In terms of music, you might have noticed CDs getting cheaper to go inline with mp3 sales. However, the surprising boom in terms of music buying has been the resurgence of vinyl, at the cost of... well, cost. More vinyl packages are being made and promoted and they are more expensive, but they are desirable collectables for vinyl collectors.

Will books follow suite? Will we start to see releases of limited editions and smaller print runs, causing excitement in collectors everywhere. It's certainly something to consider, especially when despite all the excitement around iPads, all we've seen is something that looks like a big iPhone.

In the meantime, enjoy some of Kate Tempest's poetry: