Kae Tempest: ‘I used to read David Icke. Imagine that’

‘I used to read David Icke’s books. Before the internet. Imagine that’ … Kae Tempest. Photograph: Wolfgang Tillmans

My earliest reading memory
I was on the tube with my siblings when I was around seven. I was reading Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I, which is about the royal family relocating to a council estate. We had to change trains, but I was so absorbed, I only realised as the doors closed that my siblings were shouting at me from the platform and I was going on without them.

My favourite book growing up
Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. I reread it recently because I wanted to give a copy to my niece, and it struck me how many of my beliefs and principles are actually things I learned from Ursula at eight years old.