The imagery is so visceral – and the writing so powerful – that you can feel yourself there, hovering over tragedy and concrete. A few months later the mural was demolished, along with the tower block where the Femi family lived, and they were moved to a four-bedroom terrace house down the road. By 12 he had been identified as a high achiever capable of boosting his school’s league table ratings by taking GCSEs early. The book is more than a poetry collection: containing a selection of Femi’s striking original photography, it is an impeccably curated and often beautiful snapshot of lives lived on the North Peckham Estate.

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. If Peckham were to be remove from the content and put in Flatbush or Brownsville or Redhook or even Bedford-Stuyvesant the (lifestories) poems would speak truth to those communities. Caleb Femi: ‘In lockdown, when we all had an hour allocated to us to go out into the fresh air, how many had access to greenery and nature? Chosen as a Book of the Year by New Statesman, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Rough Trade and the BBCShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First CollectionShortlisted for the Rathbones Folio PrizeLonglisted for the Jhalak Prize’Restlessly inventive, brutally graceful, startlingly beautiful .

The pictures were necessary for two reasons, he says – firstly because the collection carries an archival responsibility, but also because he wanted to police the imaginations of readers whose attitude to urban black youth is shaped and coloured by news photography. There are moments throughout that hit you with full force; the book certainly stays with you after completion. He showed me that there were ways in which you can love yourself and have a good time, and test yourself as well. Destroying me’ Michaela Coel’A poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy’ Max Porter’It’s simply stunning. Caleb has documented the journey and experiences of not just many black youths of this generation but he captures the experience of all disadvantaged youths who are full of promise, hope and talents.

You don't even need to be a poetry fan to enjoy this, it's just exceptional stories told with heart and soul. I literally gasped/caught my breath/cried as I read Femi’s poetry collection, just as I had gasped/caught my breath/cried watching IMDY.He had only properly met his parents less than a year earlier, because they had emigrated to London from Nigeria when he was a baby, leaving their children behind with a grandfather and an uncle until they had saved enough money to bring them over.

That’s something I wanted to investigate: the impact of urban landscapes in impoverished public housing areas; how it shapes the way that people who live in these spaces see themselves and how the world sees them. Coel, who was in full creative control of the project from start to finish, was rightfully showered in critical plaudits for her exploration of power, consent and lived experiences of black people. I wanted to challenge that discourse – to point out that young boys wearing hoodies don’t carry this innate threat within themselves. While we’re partying a few streets away, Femi speaks of the mortality of forgotten black boys, boys robbed of their chance to become men. It’s radical to offer spoken word poetry for a Heathrow promotional video (outside this particular collection) and state that We don’t all sound like Downton Abbey / Not all Northerners speak like Wayne Rooney and to actually tell the listener to teach your ears the different accents.Where Coel uses her platform to explore sexual consent, Femi uses his poetry to explore social injustice and systemic racism. It was an example that Femi would carry with him through an English literature degree and on into a teacher training course at King’s College London, from which he went straight on to teach at a Tottenham comprehensive school. Soft and caressing at parts, angry and demanding at others: there is a perfect balance here of emotion and issue.