Lyrical, heartbreaking and hopeful, the Peckham poet's debut collection exploring the lives of young Black boys, and the architecture that shapes them.
Raised on the North Peckham estate in South London, Caleb Femi is a poet and director. He has written and directed short films for the BBC and Channel 4, and poems for Tate Modern, the Royal Society for Literature, St Paul's Cathedral, the BBC, the Guardian and more. He has been featured in the Dazed 100 list of the next generation shaping youth culture. From 2016 to 2018, he served as the Young People's Laureate for London. He recently wrote the liner material for Kano's 2019 album Hoodies All Summer. This is his first book.
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 * 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 Lanny
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
Impressive . . . At the heart of the collection is the
poet's deconstruction of language, fusing biblical cadence with a
contemporary street vernacular. There is something reminiscent
of William Blake's visionary poetic in Femi's commitment to a
realistic worship for places like Aylesbury Estate and North
Peckham, as well as their communities . . . [recalls] Gwendolyn
Brooks's and Nate Marshall's odes to Chicago . . . [Poor is]
in conversation with Roger Robinson's and Jay Bernard's poems of
witness and poetic gospel, which . . . create myths, legends, and
folklore that render black bodies as holy -- Malika Booker,
author of Pepper Seed
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 -- Sean Hewitt, author of Tongues of Fire
An urban romantic . . . powerful * Dazed & Confused *
Caleb's talent calls for a global stage -- Virgil Abloh
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
