Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!

Ishion Hutchinson’s "Far District" is best approached as a gallery rather than a series of discrete poems. For me, at least, very few of these pieces stood out on their own, but as a whole, they form an archive-like retelling of the speaker’s childhood in Jamaica.

These are muggy, sweaty poems enveloped in a shadowed spirituality. They are swirling and mystical, but they are regularly interrupted by intense physical description. The overall effect reads like a memory heightened by fever.

While I don’t think any single poem stands above the rest, Hutchinson has a remarkable ability to defamiliarize language and images, and as much of the book deals with European influence on the West Indies, it is an effective way to highlight just how “other” colonial influence has been. Here, it reads not only as foreign, but sinister on a spiritual level, with Christendom looming over almost every poem. Similarly, the numerous modern interruptions to a traditional, almost primeval, life feel profane within the context of the narrative.

"Far District" is not the most approachable book—it rewards re-reading far more than an initial read, and it almost requires readers to look beyond the text to make sense of it. It’s remarkably intertextual, and there’s a rare historical weight behind each poem. This book feels like one to spend weeks to months with, and I’m looking forward to doing so in the future.