Poor: Poems

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."

Author: Caleb Femi
Publisher: MCD
Published: 01/27/2026
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 7.78h x 5.30w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780374619855

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.