{"title":"Caleb Femi","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"poor-book-caleb-femi-9780141992150","title":"Poor","description":"WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION  Chosen as a Book of the Year by New Statesman, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Rough Trade and the BBC  Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize  'Restlessly inventive, brutally graceful, startlingly beautiful ... a landmark debut' Guardian 'Oh my God, he's just stirring me. Destroying me'  Michaela Coel 'A poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy'  Max Porter 'Takes us into new literary territory ... impressive'  Bernardine Evaristo, New Statesman (Books of the Year) 'It's simply stunning. Every image is a revelation'  Terrance Hayes  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.'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49544379629841,"sku":"GOR010910603","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49680722788625,"sku":"GOR011438177","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736853225745,"sku":"NGR9780141992150","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49775420866833,"sku":"GOR013001728","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49860177920273,"sku":"GOR010860894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50930235212049,"sku":"CIN0141992158G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52402668470545,"sku":"NLS9780141992150","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53345920418065,"sku":"CIN0141992158A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0141992158.jpg?v=1751004537"},{"product_id":"wickedest-book-caleb-femi-9780008688240","title":"The Wickedest","description":"'Atmospheric and intoxicating' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS             'A joyous, lyrical read' YOMI ADEGOKE                          'Hypnotic and freewheeling'              GUARDIAN                                     A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     WINNER OF THE SKY ARTS POETRY AWARD 2025                                     Caleb Femi returns with a landmark, life-affirming new poetry collection, The Wickedest.                        This is a minute-by-minute depiction of a typical night at a legendary monthly house party known as 'The Wickedest'. Here, we meet a vivid cast of characters, young and old, all surfing a revelry steeped in camaraderie, community, desire and a spirit of jubilant defiance.             A modern epic, The Wickedest explores the institution of shoobs or house parties and their vital role within working-class communities. The poems range from classical English sonnets to experimental forms and are immersively interwoven with photographs, text messages and ephemera. The collection playfully dissembles parties – in space, sound, law and bureaucracy – to document the precarious existence of our nightlife venues.             In Caleb Femi's inimitable, cinematic style the book builds to a crescendo that is at once euphoric and grief-soaked. The Wickedest calls us to cast our minds to the moments we stood surrounded by our loved ones on a dancefloor, arms outstretched, and freed ourselves from the weight of reality to float.             ‘One of London’s most renowned poets’ SALMA EL-WARDANY, BBC Radio London             ‘I love the collection so much’ NICK GRIMSHAW, BBC Radio 6             'A near-holy experience' JONATHAN ESCOFFERY             'This is poetry that moves and is felt in the body' ANDREW MCMILLAN                          Caleb Femi's collection, Poor, won the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2021.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50299393016081,"sku":"NGR9780008688240","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50570253369617,"sku":"GOR014001824","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50898693226769,"sku":"GOR014113289","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52595515359505,"sku":"NLS9780008688240","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52811929157905,"sku":"GOR014626620","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0008688249.jpg?v=1750939246"},{"product_id":"wickedest-book-caleb-femi-9780374616618","title":"The Wickedest","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice and one of \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Poetry Books of 2024.\u003cbr\u003e Winner of the Sky Arts Award for Poetry.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"[\u003ci\u003eThe Wickedest\u003c\/i\u003e is] alive in the way poetry must be.\" --Dwight Garner, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Atmospheric and intoxicating, lyrical and inviting, \u003ci\u003eThe Wickedest\u003c\/i\u003e is a heady night in the dance, and Caleb Femi is the life of the literary party.\" --Candice Carty-Williams, author of \u003ci\u003eQueenie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAn immersive epic taking place over one night at an underground London house party, conjured by a multi-hyphenate sensation.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Welcome to the Wickedest, the longest running house party in the South London shoob scene, always held at an undisclosed inner-city spot. You better hope you have the address: this is for locals only.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Sweaty and cinematic, pulsing with rhythm and heat, every moment here--from one-on-one intimacies to the swell of the party's collective roar--is refracted in Caleb Femi's writing. Ingeniously blending conversations, text messages, sonnets, vignettes, monologues, photos, and lyrics, \u003ci\u003eThe Wickedest\u003c\/i\u003e is a modern epic, told as a minute-by-minute chronicle of an unforgettable night out.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Femi, a multi-hyphenate sensation and the author of \u003ci\u003ePoor\u003c\/i\u003e, which was called \"a landmark debut for British poetry\" by \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, is a generational storyteller and scene setter. But \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eWickedest\u003c\/i\u003e does more than tell the story of one party; Femi uses the experience of nightlife to document the broader contexts surrounding the shoobs--the marginalization of low-income communities of color, the red tape that bars those on the edges from already shrinking communal space. Still, the party goes on. \u003ci\u003eThe Wickedest\u003c\/i\u003e is a respite and a reckoning, a community of desire, care, and resistance that carries on long past the night's end.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51001853149457,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51001855901969,"sku":"NIN9780374616618","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51602368037137,"sku":"CIN0374616612G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53429357150481,"sku":"CIN0374616612VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53450449453329,"sku":"NGR9780374616618","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374616612.jpg?v=1750845665"},{"product_id":"poor-book-caleb-femi-9780374619855","title":"Poor","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Forward Prize and chosen as a Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e and the BBC, a career-launching collection combining poetry and photography that explores the hopes and hazards of being young and Black in South London.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWhat 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 thirteen 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?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003ePoor\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 towering concrete walls and fast-gentrifying neighborhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth, and exalts the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A sensation upon its 2020 release in England, \u003ci\u003ePoor\u003c\/i\u003e is a tribute to the world that shaped the singular voice of this poet, and to the people finding the magic amid the difficulties they face. As Femi writes in one of the final poems of this book: \"I have never loved anything the way I love the endz.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53012965458193,"sku":"NIN9780374619855","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53450450469137,"sku":"NGR9780374619855","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53574146031889,"sku":"CIN0374619859VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780374619855.jpg?v=1768096662"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-ie\/collections\/author-books-by-caleb-femi.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}