Durham Book Festival and Birmingham Literature Festival are thrilled to welcome Caleb Femi to talk about his debut book Poor.

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.

Caleb Femi is a poet and director. He has written and directed short films for the BBC and Channel 4, and poems for Tate Modern, the Royal Society for Literature, St Paul’s Cathedral, the BBC, the Guardian and more. He has been featured in the Dazed 100 list of the next generation shaping youth culture. From 2016 to 2018, he served as the Young People’s Laureate for London.

Chaired by Casey Bailey, poet and author of Adjusted.

This event was produced by New Writing North and Writing West Midlands, with support from England’s other writing agencies: Writing East Midlands, New Writing South, Spread the Word, Literature Works and the National Centre for Writing.

www.durhambookfestival.com

Buy Poor here.

Caleb Femi: Poor

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