Poor by Caleb Femi
One of the most culturally arresting moments of this quite extraordinary year was the arrival on our screens of the BBC/HBO comedy-drama I May Destroy You. The show (a challenging watch from start to finish) focuses on the character of Arabella, a Twitter-famous writer who is on a deadline to finish a draft of her new book when she is drugged and sexually assaulted. The story is an autofiction, based in large part on the experiences of the show’s lead actress and writer, Michaela Coel. Coel, who was in full creative control of the project from start to finish, was rightfully showered in critical plaudits for her exploration of power, consent and lived experiences of black people.
While the BBC/HBO comedy-drama is certainly not suitable for a teenage audience, Caleb Femi’s Poor certainly is. Reading Poor (Penguin, 2020), the prodigious debut poetry collection by writer, director and photographer Caleb Femi, left me feeling much the same as I did at the end of watching Coel’s I May Destroy You. I literally gasped/caught my breath/cried as I read Femi’s poetry collection, just as I had gasped/caught my breath/cried watching IMDY. Indeed, Coel (whose review of Poor graces the front cover of the 2020 Penguin edition) seems to have responded in the same way to reading Femi’s book: ‘Oh my God, he’s just stirring me. Destroying me’.
As artists, both Coel and Femi have both done something revolutionary, political and vital with their art form, foregrounding the lived inner-city experiences of black people in the UK today. It is perhaps unsurprising that these writers have ostensibly similar backgrounds. While Coel was brought up in a predominantly working-class housing estate in Aldgate, Femi arrived in the UK from Nigeria at age seven, to live with his parents on London’s North Peckham Estate. Poor, published in 2020, is a breath-taking ode to Femi’s black boyhood lived inside the concrete blocks and walkways of the estate. In an interview with Vulture, Michaela Coel considered the impact of a childhood lived beside the brutalist architecture of inner city towerblocks: ‘I think there is something in growing up in concrete and not understanding putting fingers in soil, growing things, foundation. Femi’s book takes this idea further: in Poor concrete is a pervasive trope, paradoxically representing toughness and confinement as well as vulnerability and shelter.
IMDY and Poor exist as the means through which their creator tries to make sense of the utterly senseless in their lives. Where Coel uses her platform to explore sexual consent, Femi uses his poetry to explore social injustice and systemic racism. There are also stylistic similarities between the two. Just as Coel’s artistic stamp is all over IMDY, so, too, is Femi’s all over Poor. The book is more than a poetry collection: containing a selection of Femi’s striking original photography, it is an impeccably curated and often beautiful snapshot of lives lived on the North Peckham Estate. I May Destroy You and Poor foreground those stories criminally overlooked, neglected or silenced in media and literature (arguably also in society more widely). The works are startlingly original in the way that they give voice to the often voiceless.
If I could, I would do nothing more than read Poor from start to finish with a Senior Phase class and allow Femi’s words to be absorbed and his messages to permeate. In reality, I wouldn’t be allowed to. But there is no shortage of ways to use distinct poems within the collection with classes ranging from BGE to Senior Phase.
Here are some suggestions to get you started, if you want to use Poor in the classroom.
If you have a Level 3 class…
Read ‘Collective Noun: A Play by an Onlooker’. Study on its own, or as part of a set of poems from the collection. Check out the Teaching and Learning section of the website for analytical notes on this poem.
If you have pupils working at Level 4…
Study the utterly devastating ‘Thirteen’. Again, notes on this text can be found in the Teaching and Learning section. Alternatively read ‘Trauma is a Warm Bath’. After studying, ask pupils to consider an abstract idea (ie. sadness, love, grief) and write a poem modelled on Femi’s.
As part of the unit, use extracts from John Boughton’s Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing (Verso, 2019) as the basis of a RUAE paper. Alternatively, implement the practical strategies offered by Alex Quigley in Closing the Reading Gap to help readers get to grips with reading social science texts.
If you want to study Poor with a National 5 class…
Read ‘Because of the Times’, a poem rooted in the North Peckham Estate of Femi’s childhood. This poem builds to a heart-stopping conclusion.
If you have an Advanced Higher class…
The collection as a whole would make for an insightful Dissertation topic.