Signed Paperback - Poor: POOR / FOYLES SIGNED EDITION

“Caleb Femi is a gift to us all from the storytelling gods… a poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy… this is a vital book.” - Max Porter

Introducing a stunning debut collection from a rising star in British poetry: Poor by Caleb Femi, available to pre-order now signed by the author.

In a collection of more than fifty poems, intercut with original photography, Femi—poet, playwright, filmmaker and former Young People’s Laureate for London—takes you to the North Peckham Estate: where concrete walls tower overhead, Black boys struggle to find themselves against the backdrop of family and friends, policemen give inspirational talks at school then pull you aside for questioning, and violence threatens the borders of everyday life.

Poor is a rich and elegant portrait of the lives and passions of young boys growing up in streets above the sky, in a world of concrete at once brutal and protective. It’s an indictment of how race and class warp the safety, the possibilities and expectations of Black British youth. And it’s an ode, a romance, to a city and a space where life and beauty persevere.

Heartfelt, darkly funny, grounded, epic; suffused with imagery, with love and rage, Femi’s poetry weaves the colloquial with the profound, and at every corner the visionary swells to break through the walls of reality: this is a world, a language, of the everyday and the sublime—where tower blocks rise like gods’ bones, where the dead and the could-have-been haunt the periphery and where love and hope shimmer beyond every word. Lines climb from reality to the transcendent, words triangulating what can’t be limited to language—the romance, the tragedy, the beauty of the poetry that’s hidden in the world.

This is a sumptuous collection not to be missed—pre-order your signed copy now.