A stunning memorial work that excavates the forgotten experience of West Indian soldiers during World War I.
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.

October 1, 2023
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Jamaican-born Hutchinson presents his third collection, a book-length sequence with an architectonic structure that serves as both temple of the self and a tomb for soldiers. By juxtaposing scenes from the life of Godspeed, a young boy in Jamaica, and the fates of West Indians fighting their way across the Holy Land during WWI, Hutchinson finds a form that allows for larger statements than a stand-alone lyric. Godspeed's formative experiences are contrasted with the countless outrages suffered by "thousands upon thousands of restless shadows casting not shadows on the sand." One of the signature strengths of Hutchinson's work has been his willingness to ransack literature or forms and diction. Shakespeare, Geoffrey Hill, David Jones, Derek Walcott, T. S. Eliot, myriad allusions sustain his School of Instructions. All words have been used before, many tarnished by bad faith. Drawing from the long tradition of colonists and their language to document the exploits of exploited Jamaican volunteers to the British Imperial cause, Hutchinson makes space for the people his poem memorializes. Sounding the tradition, he makes it free and remixes the elements, putting everything in service to his own shining ends.

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November 20, 2023
Hutchinson’s potent, memorializing third collection (after House of Lords and Commons) is written in “contrapuntal versets,” to use his term, that blend the fates of volunteer soldiers from the West Indies serving in WWI with the experiences of Godspeed, a boy growing up in Jamaica in the 1990s. The soldiers’ travails begin “ice-scarred, off to Albion,” taking them to the heart of the Middle Eastern theater of war, “stalled in the holy metal of the sun.” In tandem, as Hutchinson adeptly blends time and events to create a lexically rich, glintingly lyric set of counterpoints, Godspeed reveals a “passion for his Britannica,” often lit up by his “jam jar of fireflies.” Deepened by reflections on empire and religion, there is a biblical weight to Hutchinson’s account of the “Wild butchery of souls blossomed in the desert,” its note of Ecclesiasticus struck with moving effect: “some there be which have no memorial.” These vigorous poems are an epitaph for overlooked combatants and a way of honoring the long shadows cast by a post-colonial inheritance.

October 23, 2023

Hutchinson (House of Lords and Commons) doesn't lack for ambition with this collection-length poem detailing the dual narratives of volunteer West Indian soldiers in the British regiments in World War I's Middle East theater and a dub-loving boy named Godspeed growing up in 1990s Jamaica. The poet weaves language that alternates between the lean and lyrical and offers a study in the cyclicity of history and the persistence of colonialism, particularly the way young men are sacrificed in service of the empire's endurance. The immensity of the past and the finitude of the present are layered to create a haunting portrait of a specific humanity, and through it all, Hutchinson lacquers his poetry in Biblical allusion and reference, lending the text the same impression of mythic storytelling. It reflects the tragic contours of post-WWI British poetry in mourning the loss of youth, while relying on its essential dichotomy to also document the life of young people: "Archie Comics lit up by his jam jar of blinky blink fireflies." For all its strength, this is an undeniably dense work and something of a structural pretzel, rewarding--and perhaps even requiring--multiple clear-eyed reads. VERDICT For patient, attentive readers, Hutchinson delivers a spoil of linguistic, philosophical, and spiritual riches.--Luke Gorham

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