Poor by Caleb Femi

A New Statesman and Financial Times book of the year, Poor is a startlingly powerful book that bares witness to a world that is often hidden or demonised. Through poetry and photography Caleb Femi provides an intimate, confronting portrait of the lives of young black men in Peckham.

Order your copy directly through us or buy today through our bookshop.org store.

Poor by Caleb Femi
Paperback RRP £9.99

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 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 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.'

Browse and buy through our bookshop store or order your copy today.

Our opening hours this week are:

Mon 30th 10am - 4pm
Shop floor open for the sale of essential food and household items and click and collect only

Then with lockdown finishing on Wednesday 2nd we will be open:

Wed 2nd, Thurs 3rd, Fri 4th & Sat 5th Dec
9.30am- 5.30pm

The whole shop will be back open and book browsing will be allowed again! However we ask that customers wear masks, sanitise their hands and avoid touching things unnecessarily.

You will see we have a QR code at the door, if you have the NHS COVID-19 app downloaded to your smart phone please scan this as you enter the shop.
———

After this week we will revert to our 6 days a week opening hours:

Mon: 9.30-5.30

Tues: 9.30-5.30

Wed: 9.30-1.30 (early close)

Thurs: 9.30-5.30

Fri: 9.30-5.30

Sat: 9.30-5.30