Poor - by Caleb Femi (Paperback)

About the Book

"Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Guardian and the BBC, a collection combining poetry and photography that explores the hopes and hazards of being young and Black in South London"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Forward Prize and chosen as a Book of the Year by The Guardian and the BBC, a career-launching collection combining poetry and photography that explores the hopes and hazards of being young and Black in South London.

What is it like to grow up in a place where the same police officer who told your primary school class they were special stops and searches you at thirteen because "you fit the description of a man"--and where it is possible to walk two and a half miles through an estate of 1,444 homes without ever touching the ground?

In Poor, Caleb Femi combines poetry and original photography to explore the trials, tribulations, dreams, and joys of young Black boys in twenty-first-century Peckham. He contemplates the ways in which they are informed by the built environment of towering concrete walls and fast-gentrifying neighborhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth, and exalts the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives.

A sensation upon its 2020 release in England, Poor is a tribute to the world that shaped the singular voice of this poet, and to the people finding the magic amid the difficulties they face. As Femi writes in one of the final poems of this book: "I have never loved anything the way I love the endz."

Review Quotes

"Takes us into new literary territory. . . impressive."
― Bernardine Evaristo, New Statesman (Books of the Year)

"It's rare for a book of poems to repeatedly leave you breathless when reading it. Such is the urgent brilliance of Caleb Femi's Poor . . . Femi's language is restlessly inventive, unerring in uncovering images that lodge in your memory. His use of concrete as a recurring motif is brutally graceful, encapsulating this startlingly beautiful book, a landmark debut for British poetry."
― Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian

"I am reading a powerful book of poetry by a young man, Caleb Femi. Oh my God, he has a book called Poor and he's just stirring me. Destroying me. I look up to him as a poet."
―Michaela Coel

"Caleb Femi is a gift to us all from the storytelling gods. He is a poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy. But above all, this is love poetry. Love of community, language, music and form. This book flows from the fabric of boyhood to the politics and architecture of agony, from the material to the spiritual, always moving, always real. Poor is the heartbeat of a living city which truly knows itself. Caleb is a mighty and positive force in UK culture and this is a vital book."
―Max Porter, author of Shy

"In this fabulous debut, concrete becomes a paradox of toughness and vulnerability, confinement and shelter . . . Caleb Femi's riveting photographs and compassionate yet hard-hitting lines map North Peckham's black boys and blocks . . . His depictions of young black men possess a brother's empathy . . . It's simply stunning. Every image is a revelation."
―Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

"Mesmerizing and transporting. I've never read a collection like this . . . I literally had to shake off the experience once I was finished. [This] incredible collection . . . gives voice to a London many would prefer to ignore . . . I don't think it possible for anyone to come away from this book without having developed new levels of empathy and compassion."
― Derek Owusu, author of That Reminds Me

"Caleb Femi's Poor bristles with the exhilarations and violences of boyhood and adolescence. In its interplay of image and text, of photographic image and poetic image, the book asks us to consider what is seen and unseen, spoken of and concealed; what is, in one of many numinous phrases, 'proof of light.' More than this, these are poems of witness, both noun and verb: poems of the self and what the self can bear."
―Stephen Sexton, author of If All the World and Love Were Young

"Giving a mythic resonance to communal life, the poems in Caleb Femi's Poor are vital, confronting and electric. Political, spiritual, formally inventive and energized by a music of protest and grief, this is a rare and anthemic debut."
―Seán Hewitt, author of Tongues of Fire

"Caleb's talent calls for a global stage."
―Virgil Abloh

About the Author

Caleb Femi is a writer, director, and photographer. He is the author of The Wickedest and the poetry collection Poor, which won the 2021 Forward Prize, was short-listed for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and was named a best book of 2020 by many publications, including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Observer, and the BBC. Femi has also directed TV episodes for HBO, the BBC, and Netflix, as well as commercials, high-fashion films, and runway shows for brands such as Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Bottega Veneta, and Dior. From 2016 to 2018 he served as Young People's Laureate for London, where he lives.