Poet, performer, novelist: the rise of the uncategorisable Kate Tempest

Trying to categorise Kate Tempest is something akin to untangling a basket of eels; her work a slippery, elusive thing. This week alone she has received a Mercury prize nomination for her album Everybody Down, and found herself named as one of 2014's Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society. But then there is the novel. And the play she staged in 2012, as well as her phenomenal reputation as a spoken word poet.

What unites all of these is the 27-year-old Londoner's love of words as playful, pliable, powerful things, as well as her insight into a world and a generation that is often overlooked or ignored.