Review: Poor

Poor by Caleb Femi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Collection of poetry and photography covering life on a Peckham council estate, and the experience of growing up poor and hungry in almost doomed surroundings drawing upon notions of class, race and the constant gentrification of the area - the emotional toll of feeling trapped in the same place where several of your friends have either died or been arrested whilst the white middle class see the same spaces in a completely different manner. Femi has some excellent uses of language, bringing in frequent allusions to culture and there's an energy and emotion to the work that's quite rare. I'd love to give it a higher rating, but found the work overlong and became diminishing returns - the opening 50 pages or so were revelatory, but the rest of the book was a struggle. Certainly a writer to watch though.

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