Books
School of Instructions
Deep-dyed in language both sensuous and biblical, Ishion Hutchinson's School of Instructions memorializes the experience of West Indian soldiers volunteering in British regiments in the Middle East during World War I. The poem narrates the psychic and physical terrors of these young Black fighters in as they struggle against the colonial power they served; their story overlaps with that of Godspeed, a schoolboy living in rural Jamaica of the 1990s. This visionary collision, in which the horizontal, documentary shape of the narrative is interrupted by sudden lyric effusions, unsettles both time and event, mapping great moments of heroism onto the trials of everyday existence It reshapes grand gestures of heroism in a music of supple, vigilant intensity.
Elegiac, epochal and lyrical, School of Instructions confronts the legacy of imperial silencing and weaves shards of remembrance—"your word mass / your mix match / your jamming of elements"—into a unique form of survival. It is a masterpiece of imaginative recuperation by a poet of prodigious gifts.
The Fire Thus Kindled May Be Kindled Again
This essay by Ishion Hutchinson was originally given as a lecture at the Newcastle Poetry Festival 2019, supported by the Royal Literary Fund. Hutchinson, in an invitation for us all to become ‘kindlers’, explores Frederick Douglass’s legacy, and what the idea of legacy means, through a close reading of poems by W.E.B. Dubois and Robert Hayden. This is intense, impassioned and important prose by an award winning poet.
House of Lords and Commons
"A tensile strength runs through the vibrant abundance of Ishion Hutchinson's work—it is the pure line of poetry, shaped by his sun-lit vision and music. House of Lords and Commons has been wrested from suffering and cruelty, irony and violence. And, in the end, it is an act of forgiveness."
—Susan Stewart
Far District: Poems
"Far District is a marvellous book of generous, giving poems. Not only does this collection travel through an abiding language and far-reaching imagery, but it also transports the reader to a complex psychological terrain through a basic honesty and truthfulness. The leap-frogging of borders is executed with an ease that never fails to engage the reader’s mind and body. There’s a playfulness here that’s contagious and, at times, even outrageous in its breathless insinuation through a biting clarity and directness that would have challenged The Great Sparrow. Hutchinson is a young poet who seems to journey wherever his poems take him, and the reader is blessed to accompany him."
—Yusef Komunyakaa
The Garden
"It’s hard to imagine any electronic wizardry that could match the expansive imagery that Hutchinson’s haunting words and illustrator Golombeck’s sparse drawings spark in the mind as they take readers slowly across a Rorschach-stained backdrop. Pinching, swiping and spinning Hutchinson’s verses, as readers must do to read them, has the effect of quietly closing the door on one world and opening up the door on another."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)