Poet and photographer · Nigeria
Caleb Femi
Caleb Femi (born 1990) is a Nigerian-born British poet, photographer and filmmaker. He was London's first Young People's Laureate, and his collection Poor (2021) sets poems beside his own black-and-white photographs of the North Peckham estate where he grew up, in a portrait of young Black men, architecture and belonging.
Updated 2 min read
Caleb Femi was born in 1990 in Nigeria and moved to London at the age of seven to join his parents, growing up on the North Peckham estate in south London. He trained and worked as an English teacher before becoming known as a poet, and in 2016 he was named London's first Young People's Laureate, a post he held until 2018.
His first collection, Poor (2021), brings together poems and his own black-and-white photographs. It is a portrait of the estate and of the young Black men who grew up there — their friendships, their grief, the police and the concrete of the buildings that shaped them — and of how architecture and policy shape lives. The book was widely praised and was in the running for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2021; listings differ on whether it won.
Femi also makes short films and works across poetry, photography and moving image.
How to read the book: the photographs are not illustrations. They show the places and faces of the North Peckham estate in black and white, and the poems answer them, so the book works by placing a picture and a poem side by side and asking you to hold both. That reading is this site's own.
Where to see the work
The book itself is the portfolio, published by Penguin; the Forward Arts Foundation and i-D have profiles. We have not confirmed a gallery display of the photographs. See our lists of Nigerian photographers and Nigerian artists.
