Poetry Reading Group

Calling all poetry lovers in Edinburgh – come and join us every second Monday of the month for our new poetry reading group, VOICES. From Queer and BAME voices, to Native American voices and voices in translation, our reading group will be an opportunity to explore an eclectic range of poetry.

No need to have read every poem from a collection or every collection from a poet! Come along for a casual conversation, to share interpretations and find meaning together.

VOICES: Black British Poet, Caleb Femi

This month, our poetry reading group will discuss Caleb Femi’s brutal and beautiful debut collection, Poor. Published in 2020, Poor was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize, gathering among other praises by Max Porter, Bernadine Evaristo and Terrance Hayes.

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.