Thirteen by Caleb Femi

*Thirteen* by Caleb Femi explores the experience of being a Black teenage boy in South London, navigating the thrill of adolescence alongside the genuine threats that come with it. Femi vividly conveys the essence of being thirteen — the confidence, the fragility, and the shifting perceptions from the world around you. It serves as a heartfelt tribute to a time in life that is both bright and unstable.

The tone is tender and elegiac, yet avoids sentimentality. Femi writes with the assurance of someone who has truly earned the right to discuss this particular time and place — there's no detachment or anthropological perspective. Beneath the warmth, there’s an undercurrent of grief, as the poem is aware of what follows thirteen for far too many of the boys it honors.

Caleb Femi was born in Nigeria and grew up on the North Peckham Estate in South London. He was the Young People's Laureate for London from 2016 to 2018, and his debut collection *Poor* (Penguin, 2021) — which includes the poem *Thirteen* — is a significant contribution to contemporary British poetry. The collection blends poetry, photography, and design to capture life on a South London estate, focusing on the unique experiences of boys who lived there in the 2000s. The North Peckham Estate is marked by the murder of Damilola Taylor in 2000, an incident that profoundly affected that generation. Femi writes within a tradition of Black British poetry that emphasizes specificity and self-representation, challenging the typical portrayal of working-class Black communities in British culture — framing them as problems to be fixed rather than lives to be understood.