Ishion Hutchinson Biography
Ishion Hutchinson is an award-winning Jamaican poet and essayist.
Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He received a BA from the University of the West Indies, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD from the University of Utah. His poetry and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Review (UK), Narrative, New Letters, Granta, Gulf Coast, The Huffington Post, The Wolf (UK), Prairie Schooner, Attica, Caribbean Review of Books, and the LA Review. His first collection, Far District, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK), won the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. Hutchinson is also the recipient of the 2013 Whiting Award and the 2011 Academy of American Poets' Larry Levis Prize.
He currently teaches courses in poetry and creative writing at Cornell University and serves as contributing editor to the literary journal, Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art.
At nights birds hammered my unborn
child's heart to strength, each strike bringing
...
A furnace in my father's voice; I prayed for the coal stove's
roses, a cruise ship lit like a castle
...
Brailed up from birth, these obdurate, obituary corners
of second life the hospital light ravened solstice
...
Lesson of the day: Syria and Styria.
For Syria, read: His conquering banner shook from Syria.
And for Styria: Look at this harp of blood, mapping.
...
The old trees shake out medals at midday
to the ship paused for a meteor's blunting
glimpse in the windy yellow of the water,
...
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