The Wickedest
by Caleb Femi
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Pub Date Jan 21 2025 | Archive Date Feb 21 2025
Description
One of The Guardian's Best Poetry Books of 2024
"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
“Caleb Femi is a gift to us all from the storytelling gods. He is a poet of truth and rage, heartbreak and joy.” —Max Porter, author of Shy
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 Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
"Hypnotic and freewheeling . . . The book captures the sensual chaos of dance and the sociopolitical dynamics of a clubhouse culture where Black working-class communities share a common rhythm of grief and euphoria . . . The Wickedest celebrates the process of making and making up when art confronts change." —Kit Fan, The Guardian
"In The Wickedest, Femi draws on his skills as a photographer as well as a poet to encapsulate the house party experience in a book that’s stylish and wittily curated — complete with floor plan, screen grabs of text messages, even a 'Promotion Risk Assessment Form' from London’s Metropolitan Police, anarchically completed. It is fun, optimistic and beautiful to look at." —Maria Crawford, Financial Times
"[The Wickedest] spins an ecstatic story of one night in South London’s underground party scene . . . Throughout, Femi gleefully evokes the sense of liberation found by the partygoers as they free themselves of the weight of reality. It’s a blast." —Publishers Weekly
"Wholly immersive, The Wickedest crystalizes and forever elevates bashment in this pulsing, visceral fever dream. Femi’s urgent, striking lyricism and images call for us to shake loose jadedness, to recapture what it means to be alive with one another. A near-holy experience, The Wickedest should be read, reread, and studied." —Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You
"A riveting collection, bottled in a time capsule of nostalgia, and lived experience. These poems are as tender, as they are a vibe. A head nod to communities meeting in ritual. The Wickedest honors the world within a world. The enjoyment in language, and complexities in how gatherings can unfold." —Yomi Sode, author of Manorisms
"A mellifluously marvellous journey towards joy, The Wickedest pulses with Rhythm and Poetry at its most penetrating and picturesque. Caleb has constructed a jewel of a jam; glimmering, sweaty, sensual, unforgettable." —Inua Ellams, author of The Half-God of Rainfall
"The Wickedest by the young British Nigerian poet-filmmaker Caleb Femi is a mesmerizing journey through the different moments of one night’s revelry. A heady mix of the formal and urbane, the sacred and mundane, the collection keeps you in suspense, making you question whether you’re counting down to something or have left something significant behind. The time signatures dance unpredictably, heightening the anticipation and intrigue. The vivid pictures punctuating the book lend it a cinematic scope, immersing you in a unique cultural experience. The Wickedest is a hypnotic, experiential happening of a book—essential reading for all." —Roger Robinson, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning author of A Portable Paradise
"In The Wickedest, Caleb Femi renders thrillingly tangible a world of moments in which the relationship between the DJ the riddim and the dancer is a kind of sacrament, a form of collective healing in the face of life's manifold threats to black life." —Kayo Chingonyi, author of A Blood Condition
"From its first word this is poetry that moves and is felt in the body; the poem taken from the page to the dance floor of the club. 'I’ve been eating sound since ice-cream van melodies,' writes Femi. Those sounds, that movement, fill this collection." —Andrew McMillan, author of Pity
"Immersive, rapturous writing that truly transports. The Wickedest is a joyous, lyrical read that I won't soon forget, and Caleb Femi, an exceptionally talented poet." —Yomi Adegoke, author of The List
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374616618 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 96 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Kristiana R, Reviewer
Caleb Femi's composition of The Wickedest is superb with time stamps marking the progression of the event this collection celebrates. Described as a 'modern epic', Femi explores the 'institution' of house parties through stunning lyricism married with hazy, kaleidoscopic photographs. We are transported to the vibrancy, heady and breathing walls of the house in which people are dancing, falling in love, and drowning their sorrows.
The Wickedest is a masterful follow up to Poor, particularly in regards to how it positively embraces culture. This collection is palpably free and wholly symbolic of what it portrays.
Educator 1494858
I'm thinking about the "long poem" in relation to what Stephanie Burt has written about the form, namely questions of: "What holds a book of poems together? What makes it feel like something more than, something other than, a gathering, a stack, a heap, a mere collocation?"
Caleb Femi’s The Wickedest provides an easy and effortless answer: a nightclub, an epic party, a dance that never ends. The Wickedest is a sweaty & intoxicating poem, glowing luminescent darkness all the way through. The only comp that comes to mind might be Tommy Pico's IRL, or Luke Kennard's Sonnets (a collection of poems set in a sad house party). Where Kennard is more formalistic and philosophical, Femi is nimble and playful with language and form; this is language that dances on the page. There's a shutter-like quality to the speaker's eye as they move through the space of the club, weaving in and out of moments that range from existential (03.51am, "Max glances at Shelly") to diabolically comical ("Should you have fear or respect for the person who takes a shit at a house party?"). I love the way Femi describes DJs as weaving sound into "sonic Matryoshka dolls / (inside a song / is another song singing)"; so much of his language lingers in the hot glow of remembering that what makes a good party experience are those ineffable moments on the dance floor, moments where you lock eyes with a stranger and music pours back and forth between people who don't even know each other's names.
I already know a few friends who I will gift this book to once it comes out, friends who don't usually read poetry, yet who will understand when they see a thing they love being written about with such quick and sharp care.
A note on the digital edition: a lot of the photographs appear pixelated or low-res, not sure if this was an intentional choice on Femi's part (it does fit with the book's overall aesthetic) but I found myself squinting to read photos that contained text, like in "Jevon catches the fever" and the "Promotion Event Risk Assessment Form" (p. 34 of ebook). I haven't checked yet but I do hope there is alt text for the photographs, as they feel like an essential part of the book's vocabulary and flow.
Emily O, Reviewer
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑾𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒆𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠, 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐬, 𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬, 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐬. 𝐈 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧! 𝐈𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.
𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝑜 𝒞𝒶𝓁𝑒𝒷 𝐹𝑒𝓂𝒾, 𝐹𝒶𝓇𝓇𝒶𝓇, 𝒮𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓊𝓈, & 𝒢𝒾𝓇𝑜𝓊𝓍, & 𝒩𝑒𝓉𝒢𝒶𝓁𝓁𝑒𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒜𝑅𝒞! 𝒜𝓁𝓁 𝑜𝓅𝒾𝓃𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝓂𝓎 𝑜𝓌𝓃.
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