The Wickedest

'Atmospheric and intoxicating' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS 'A joyous, lyrical read ' YOMI ADEGOKE 'Hypnotic and freewheeling' GUARDIAN A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE SKY ARTS POETRY AWARD 2025 Caleb Femi returns with a landmark, life-affirming new poetry collection, The Wickedest . This is a minute-by-minute depiction of a typical night at a legendary monthly house party known as 'The Wickedest'. Here, we meet a vivid cast of characters, young and old, all surfing a revelry steeped in camaraderie, community, desire and a spirit of jubilant defiance. A modern epic, The Wickedest explores the institution of shoobs or house parties and their vital role within working-class communities. The poems range from classical English sonnets to experimental forms and are immersively interwoven with photographs, text messages and ephemera. The collection playfully dissembles parties – in space, sound, law and bureaucracy – to document the precarious existence of our nightlife venues. In Caleb Femi's inimitable, cinematic style the book builds to a crescendo that is at once euphoric and grief-soaked. The Wickedest calls us to cast our minds to the moments we stood surrounded by our loved ones on a dancefloor, arms outstretched, and freed ourselves from the weight of reality to float. ‘One of London’s most renowned poets ’ SALMA EL-WARDANY, BBC Radio London ‘I love the collection so much’ NICK GRIMSHAW, BBC Radio 6 'A near-holy experience' JONATHAN ESCOFFERY 'This is poetry that moves and is felt in the body' ANDREW MCMILLAN Caleb Femi's collection, Poor, won the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2021.

'Atmospheric and intoxicating' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS 'A joyous, lyrical read ' YOMI ADEGOKE 'Hypnotic and freewheeling' GUARDIAN A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE SKY ARTS POETRY AWARD 2025 Caleb Femi returns with a landmark, life-affirming new poetry collection, The Wickedest . This is a minute-by-minute depiction of a typical night at a legendary monthly house party known as 'The Wickedest'. Here, we meet a vivid cast of characters, young and old, all surfing a revelry steeped in camaraderie, community, desire and a spirit of jubilant defiance. A modern epic, The Wickedest explores the institution of shoobs or house parties and their vital role within working-class communities. The poems range from classical English sonnets to experimental forms and are immersively interwoven with photographs, text messages and ephemera. The collection playfully dissembles parties – in space, sound, law and bureaucracy – to document the precarious existence of our nightlife venues. In Caleb Femi's inimitable, cinematic style the book builds to a crescendo that is at once euphoric and grief-soaked. The Wickedest calls us to cast our minds to the moments we stood surrounded by our loved ones on a dancefloor, arms outstretched, and freed ourselves from the weight of reality to float. ‘One of London’s most renowned poets ’ SALMA EL-WARDANY, BBC Radio London ‘I love the collection so much’ NICK GRIMSHAW, BBC Radio 6 'A near-holy experience' JONATHAN ESCOFFERY 'This is poetry that moves and is felt in the body' ANDREW MCMILLAN Caleb Femi's collection, Poor, won the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2021.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and one of The Guardian 's Best Poetry Books of 2024. Winner of the Sky Arts Award for Poetry. "[ The Wickedest is] alive in the way poetry must be." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Atmospheric and intoxicating, lyrical and inviting, The Wickedest is a heady night in the dance, and Caleb Femi is the life of the literary party." --Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie An immersive epic taking place over one night at an underground London house party, conjured by a multi-hyphenate sensation. Welcome to the Wickedest, the longest running house party in the South London shoob scene, always held at an undisclosed inner-city spot. You better hope you have the address: this is for locals only. Sweaty and cinematic, pulsing with rhythm and heat, every moment here--from one-on-one intimacies to the swell of the party's collective roar--is refracted in Caleb Femi's writing. Ingeniously blending conversations, text messages, sonnets, vignettes, monologues, photos, and lyrics, The Wickedest is a modern epic, told as a minute-by-minute chronicle of an unforgettable night out. Femi, a multi-hyphenate sensation and the author of Poor , which was called "a landmark debut for British poetry" by The Guardian , is a generational storyteller and scene setter. But The Wickedest does more than tell the story of one party; Femi uses the experience of nightlife to document the broader contexts surrounding the shoobs--the marginalization of low-income communities of color, the red tape that bars those on the edges from already shrinking communal space. Still, the party goes on. The Wickedest is a respite and a reckoning, a community of desire, care, and resistance that carries on long past the night's end.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and one of The Guardian 's Best Poetry Books of 2024. Winner of the Sky Arts Award for Poetry. "[ The Wickedest is] alive in the way poetry must be." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Atmospheric and intoxicating, lyrical and inviting, The Wickedest is a heady night in the dance, and Caleb Femi is the life of the literary party." --Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie An immersive epic taking place over one night at an underground London house party, conjured by a multi-hyphenate sensation. Welcome to the Wickedest, the longest running house party in the South London shoob scene, always held at an undisclosed inner-city spot. You better hope you have the address: this is for locals only. Sweaty and cinematic, pulsing with rhythm and heat, every moment here--from one-on-one intimacies to the swell of the party's collective roar--is refracted in Caleb Femi's writing. Ingeniously blending conversations, text messages, sonnets, vignettes, monologues, photos, and lyrics, The Wickedest is a modern epic, told as a minute-by-minute chronicle of an unforgettable night out. Femi, a multi-hyphenate sensation and the author of Poor , which was called "a landmark debut for British poetry" by The Guardian , is a generational storyteller and scene setter. But The Wickedest does more than tell the story of one party; Femi uses the experience of nightlife to document the broader contexts surrounding the shoobs--the marginalization of low-income communities of color, the red tape that bars those on the edges from already shrinking communal space. Still, the party goes on. The Wickedest is a respite and a reckoning, a community of desire, care, and resistance that carries on long past the night's end.