Far District

Winner of the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry.

Far District explores a journey between worlds: the familiar culture of the rural village, which the poet-speaker feels ambivalent towards, and the world of western learning, the 'luminous sea of myth' that the writer has felt shut out of because of physical and intellectual poverty. As the poet's journey takes him away from home and into the world of books and learning, there comes a new vision of what 'home' might offer  a vision that can be represented through memory and the literary imagination.

""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

Ishion Hutchinson received his MFA in Poetry from New York University. His work has appeared in the LA Review, Callaloo, Caribbean Review of Books, Poetry International and the chapbook, Bryan's Bay.