Key Quote
“"you are a supernova"”
Caleb Femi · Thirteen
Focus: “supernova”
The 'supernova' metaphor is transformed from a promise of cosmic potential into a cruel irony — the same officer who called the boy a star now treats him as a suspect.
Technique 1 — SECOND PERSON PERSPECTIVE & DRAMATIC IRONY
Femi uses the second person ('you') to place the reader directly inside the boy's experience. This is not observation but immersion: the reader becomes the 13-year-old, feels the police officer's hand on their shoulder, experiences the confusion and fear. The technique collapses the distance between reader and subject, making it impossible to remain a detached spectator. For white readers especially, the 'you' forces an encounter with a reality they might otherwise never experience.
The poem's most devastating device is its dramatic irony: the police officer who stops and suspects the boy is the same officer who previously visited his school and called the students 'supernovas' — stars full of potential. The officer does not recognise the child he once inspired. This irony is not comic but tragic: it reveals how the same society that claims to nurture Black children simultaneously criminalises them. The word 'supernova' collapses from a metaphor of brilliance into a metaphor of destruction — a star that explodes and dies.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
The poem charts a devastating regression from cosmic possibility to racial profiling. The boy begins as a 'supernova' — a celestial body of immense energy and potential — and ends as a suspect who 'fits a description.' His identity is overwritten by the racial stereotype imposed upon him: he is no longer a child, a student, a dreamer, but a body that matches a criminal profile. Femi shows how systemic racism does not merely disadvantage Black children but actively destroys their sense of self, replacing wonder with fear and potential with suspicion.
Key Words
Technique 2 — THE 'SUPERNOVA' METAPHOR — COLLAPSE & INVERSION
The metaphor of the supernova is the poem's structural and thematic centre. A supernova is the explosive death of a star — the brightest moment of its existence is also its last. Femi uses this scientific fact as a metaphor for the experience of Black boyhood: the moment of greatest potential ('you are a supernova') is also the moment of greatest danger. The metaphor inverts — what seemed like a promise of brilliance becomes a prophecy of destruction.
The collapse of the supernova metaphor mirrors the collapse of the boy's innocence. Before the encounter with the police, the word 'supernova' carried only positive associations — brilliance, energy, limitless potential. After the encounter, it becomes contaminated by its literal meaning: an explosion, a death, the end of a star. Femi demonstrates how systemic racism poisons language itself, transforming words of encouragement into words of annihilation (total destruction). The boy can never hear 'supernova' the same way again.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
RACIAL PROFILING & STOP-AND-SEARCH
In England and Wales, Black people are disproportionately targeted by police stop-and-search powers — statistically over seven times more likely to be stopped than white people. The phrase 'fitting a description' has become a euphemism (a mild expression for something harsh) for racial profiling: Black boys are stopped not because of their behaviour but because of their appearance. Femi's poem exposes this systemic injustice through the specific, personal experience of a single child.
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LAUREATE & 'POOR'
Caleb Femi is a British-Nigerian poet who served as London's first Young People's Laureate (2016–2018). His debut collection 'Poor' (2020) won the Forward Prize and explores growing up on a North Peckham estate. The title 'Thirteen' refers to the boy's age — the threshold between childhood and adolescence, a moment when Black boys begin to be perceived as threats rather than children by the institutions that should protect them.
Key Words
WOW — FRANTZ FANON'S 'BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS'
Femi's poem dramatises the moment Frantz Fanon described in 'Black Skin, White Masks' (1952) — the experience of a Black person being reduced to their race by the white gaze. Fanon wrote: 'I am fixed... I am laid bare. I feel, I see in those white faces that it is not a new man who has come in, but a new kind of man.' The boy in 'Thirteen' experiences this same objectification: he is not seen as an individual but as a type — a 'description' that all Black boys are assumed to fit. Fanon argued that this experience creates a double consciousness (W.E.B. Du Bois's term) — the Black subject is forced to see himself through the eyes of a society that fears and criminalises him. The 'supernova' becomes the self the boy was before the white gaze found him; the 'suspect' is the self that gaze creates. Femi's poem insists that we witness the violence of this transformation and understand that it is not natural or inevitable but a product of systemic design.
Key Words