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The Poet Index · Entry 1368

Caleb Femi
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“Caleb Femi was born in 1990 in Kano, Nigeria, raised by his grandmother before moving to London at age seven to join his parents on the North Peckham Estate in Peckham.”

Editorial intro

Storgy editorial

Editorial intro

Caleb Femi made the North Peckham Estate the subject of his debut poetry collection *Poor*, which rejects documentary distance — the speaker is not observing the estate from the outside but engaging deeply within it, alongside photographs that Femi captured of the place and its people. He belongs to a generation of British poets who emerged through slam and laureateship before focusing on the page, which infuses his work with both oral urgency and thoughtful visual design. What surprises readers expecting raw performance or quiet lyricism is how effectively *Poor* captures both registers at once: lines that resonate audibly and visually, structured around a specific postcode yet addressing broader questions of belonging, loss, and what it costs to survive in a place the world has already dismissed.

Full poem text lives on Poetry Foundation and poets.org — we link directly.

Biographical record

About Caleb Femi

Caleb Femi was born in 1990 in Kano, Nigeria, raised by his grandmother before moving to London at age seven to join his parents on the North Peckham Estate in Peckham. This transition from northern Nigeria to one of South London's notable social housing estates became the gravitational center of his creative life. He later studied English at Queen Mary, University of London, and from 2014 to 2016 taught English at a secondary school in Tottenham, a period that kept him close to the young people whose voices and realities are present throughout his work. Femi's public profile as a poet grew rapidly. In 2015 he won the Roundhouse Poetry Slam, one of the UK's most visible platforms for spoken and performance poetry. The following year, in 2016, he was appointed the first Young People's Laureate for London, a role that signified both his standing in the spoken word community and his commitment to poetry as a civic, communal practice rather than a purely literary one. His debut collection, *Poor*, published on 30 July 2020, centers around the North Peckham Estate and the lives that emerged there — young Black men, friendship, grief, systemic neglect, and the unique textures of a place that mainstream culture tends to reduce to statistics. The book is distinguished by its integration of photography alongside the poems, making the visual and verbal inseparable. *Poor* won the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in October 2021, confirming its standing as one of the most significant debut collections in recent British poetry. Femi also works as a film director and photographer, and has written and directed five short films: *And They Knew Light* (2017), *Wishbone* (2018), *Secret Life of Gs* (2019), *Survivor's Guilt* (2020), and *Giraffe* (2023). His practice across these forms remains consistent: he repeatedly explores Black British experiences in urban South London, focusing on the lives of young men, and examining how communities represent themselves versus how they are portrayed by others. In 2021 he was named in *Dazed* magazine's Dazed100 list of the next generation shaping youth culture, a recognition that positioned him at the intersection of poetry, visual culture, and social commentary.

Reader questions

Frequently asked

Where did Caleb Femi grow up, and how does that shape his poetry?

Femi was born in Kano, Nigeria, in 1990 and raised by his grandmother before moving at seven to the North Peckham Estate in South London. This estate serves as the setting and emotional core of *Poor*, his debut collection. The experience of arriving as a child from Nigeria and growing up in one of London's most challenging social housing environments provided him with a perspective that is neither that of a tourist nor a sociologist — he writes from within the community.

What is *Poor* about, and what made it stand out?

*Poor* focuses on the North Peckham Estate — the young Black men who grew up there, the friendships formed, the losses experienced, and how systemic neglect influences daily life. It won the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2021. Its distinctive feature is the inclusion of Femi's photography alongside the poems, allowing the book to function both as a poetry collection and as a visual document of a specific place and time.

What is Femi's voice like on the page — is it closer to performance poetry or traditional lyric?

Femi's background in slam — he won the Roundhouse Poetry Slam in 2015 — lends his lines rhythmic directness and oral confidence. However, *Poor* is not merely a transcribed performance; the poems are meticulously designed for the page, with line breaks and spatial arrangements that invite close reading. The voice is straightforward yet sophisticated, shifting between elegy, address, and compact narrative.

What is the most common misreading of Femi's work?

Some readers approach *Poor* primarily as social reportage — a document of deprivation on a London council estate — and overlook its qualities as a nuanced work of formal craft and personal elegy. Femi does not merely serve as a witness to conditions; he writes about love, friendship, and emotional life within a place that rarely receives such sustained lyrical attention. The estate serves as a backdrop, not a superficial subject.

Which poets does Femi's work resemble or speak to?

Within British poetry, his work shares thematic territory with poets like Warsan Shire and Jay Bernard, who also explore Black diasporic experiences in London with formal ambition and emotional depth. His use of photography in the poetry collection aligns with broader documentary poetics. His slam background connects him to a spoken word tradition that includes poets such as Saul Williams, although Femi's page work takes its own unique direction.

Where should a new reader start with Caleb Femi?

*Poor* is both his debut and his most substantial published work to date, making it the ideal starting point. New readers might begin with the poems addressing the North Peckham Estate before engaging with the collection as a whole, paying attention to the photographs as integral to the work rather than mere illustrations. His short films — especially *Secret Life of Gs* (2019) — provide an alternative entry point into the same themes and sensibilities.