Let Them Eat Chaos by Kae Tempest Michael Longley As well as selecting favourite

As well as selecting favourite poems from the trilogy – readers’ and writers’ choices as well as his own favourites – editor Neil Astley provides background notes on the poets and poems

a list of flowers is not really a list of flowers

recounted in calypso-inspired rhythms

ghost mouths hidden inside the mouth you are kissing

as well as reimagination and regeneration

Let Them Eat Chaos by Kae Tempest Michael Longley As well as selecting favouriteLet Them Eat Chaos, Kae Tempest's new long poem written for live performance and heard on the album release of the same name, is both a powerful sermon and a moving play for voices. Seven neighbours inhabit the same London street, but are all unknown to each other. The clock freezes in the small hours, and, one by one, we see directly into their lives: lives that are damaged, disenfranchised, lonely, broken, addicted, and all, apparently, without