New York Times Steps Into Ishion Hutchinson's House of Lords and Commons

William Logan of the New York Times writes that "Ishion Hutchinson’s darkly tinged yet exuberant new poems are the strongest to come out of the Caribbean in a generation." A Jamaican poet informed as much by the dissolution of his cultural heritage, as by the blossoming structures and imagery in Derek Walcott’s writings, Hutchinson's new collection expounds on the immigrant experience, for insiders and outsiders to its many nuances.

Haunted by his country’s fractured past, by memories of an upbringing starved of books, he escaped from history through literature. If his heart still lies in Jamaica, writers have given him a landscape beyond memory. His touchstone is the magnificent passage in Xenophon where the Greek mercenaries, having fought their way across the Persian Empire, come to the Black Sea, shouting “Thalatta! Thalatta!” (“The sea! The sea!”). The moment would brand any poet trying to find his way home.

If this resembles Derek Walcott’s poetry, the heavy influence is lightly worn. The saturated descriptions of island flora, the pen portraits (as they once were called) of local characters, the stranger-in-a-strange-land displacement, the visceral love of Europe and the classics — all these make “House of Lords and Commons” indebted to the poet who for half a century has cast a long shadow over Caribbean literature. Hutchinson’s elegant, rough-edged poems have wrestled with influence without being overwhelmed.

Learn more by checking out the New York Times. Care for another exuberant take on Hutchinson's House of Lords and Commons?—we got you covered here.