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Poems
by Ishion Hutchinson
Far District, the transporting debut by the author of House of Lords and Commons, charts the spiritual path of a poet-speaker caught between two spheres: the culture of bush people and a luminous, dangerous sea of myth.
Crafting an impressionistic portrait of his youth in Jamaica, Ishion Hutchinson explores the West Indian distrust of European literature and mythology. The speaker fears the land of myth because he is loyal to the bush people, but he also desires to transcend his physical and intellectual poverty. Little by little, the two cultures come together as the speaker begins grafting childhood memories onto the realm of imagination, shaped by art, music, literature, and new glimpses of the world.
Written in both traditional and formless verse, as well as in English and Jamaican patois, Far District is an indelible, urgent collection. As the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award committee said of its 2011 winner, "Far District is a classic, which is to say a rare and exemplary first book."
"Poetry of this quality is never belated and ever auspicious... Everything is alive to Hutchinson. He compares and contrasts what he finds at home in Jamaica with the colonial sense of an island without history... . Hutchinson is doing what every major poet does, remaking the tradition in his own image." ―Booklist
"In this vivid and affecting first book, Ishion Hutchinson gives us a world in which 'everything was about spirit' ... Each description, each character becomes indelible." —Jacqueline Osherow, author, The Hoopoe's Crown
"A marvelous book of generous, giving poems." —Yusef Komunyakaa, author, Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
This information about Far District was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ishion Hutchinson is the author of Bryan's Bay, and his poetry and essays have appeared in publications such as Attica, Caribbean Review of Books, and LA Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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