Poor

Brought to you by Penguin.

''An urban romantic ... powerful'' Dazed & Confused
''A poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy'' Max Porter

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 13 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 explores 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 concrete walls and gentrifying neighbourhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth, and pays tribute to the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives.

Above all, this is a tribute to the world that shaped a poet, and to the people forging difficult lives and finding magic within it. As Femi writes in one of the final poems of this book: ''I have never loved anything the way I love the endz.''

© Caleb Femi 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020