Ishion Hutchinson’s School of Instructions (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023)—which has been described as “a stunning memorial work that excavates the forgotten experience of West Indian soldiers during World War I”—has been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. See the shortlist below, followed by more information on the book.
Here is the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist:
- A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails, Amelia M. Glaser (USA) and Yuliya Ilchuk (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian written by Halyna Kruk (Ukraine), Arrowsmith Press
- To 2040 by Jorie Graham (USA), Copper Canyon Press
- School of Instructions by Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica), Faber & Faber, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Door by Ann Lauterbach (USA), Penguin Books
- Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence by Homero Aridjis (Mexico), translated from the Spanish by George McWhirter (Canada/Northern Ireland), New Directions Publishing
School of Instructions: 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.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN
9780374610272
For more on the prize, see https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2024-shortlist-announcement/
For more information on the book, see https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610272/schoolofinstructions
Ishion Hutchinson’s School of Instructions (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023)—which has been described as “a stunning memorial work that excavates the forgotten experience of West Indian soldiers during World War I”—has been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. See the shortlist below, followed by more information on the book. Here is the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist:
