Caleb Femi

Caleb is a writer/director and already one of the UK’s most prestigious new poetic voices. Caleb served as the Young People’s Laureate for London from 2016-2018 after Warsan Shire, and has recently featured in The Guardian, on the Dazed 100 list of next-generation culture shapers, and a Vogue piece on a new generation of Black British filmmakers. He has written and directed short films commissioned by the BBC and Channel 4 and poems by the Tate Modern, The Royal Society for Literature, St Paul’s Cathedral, the BBC, the Guardian and many more.  His debut poetry collection POOR (attached) was published in November by Penguin Press to rapturous reviews, and we just wrapped up an auction for the collection, with Caleb to adapt and EP the series for Element/BBC.   It is a captivating debut, in which Caleb pays homage to his South London roots and the housing estate where he came of age. Combining poetry and original photography, he explores 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 is also developing an original TV series with House Productions. On the directing side he is currently directing a block of INDUSTRY S2 for Bad Wolf/BBC/HBO.