CALABASH poet Ishion Hutchinson honoured the dead including activist/journalist John Maxwell, his aunt May and the victims of the Tivoli incursion, last Friday at the local leg of his book launch Far District.

It signified the continued link to Jamaica for this Portland poet turned US lecturer of literature. However, his signiture staccato delivery was swapped for one more sombre at the Bookophillia bookstore in Kingston on Friday.

“Last week another beach got wired off,” he read about Maxwell. “If they can jail the sea and draw borders in the sand then what would they do with (us).”

The poem entitled Inferno was a “caricachure” of Maxwell aimed to signify his environmental activism. Maxwell died peacefully at his St Andrew home on December 10, after a two-year battle with cancer.

In The Garden, dedicated to the over 70 killed in the two days of gunfighting in Tivoli between the security forces and gunmen in May, he read: “The stray dogs ran but did not bark at the shadows….the dead was in flight …the night smelt of bullets”.

Hutchinson blends literary and performance poetry traditions. His poetry also transitions between Portland and the US.

The launch included introductory speeches by friend of Hutchinson, Wayne Chen, chairman of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and countless other boards and professor Edward Baugh who was Hutchinson’s former lecturer at the University of the West Indies.

In Requiem for Aunt May he read: “A calm sign in the trees of May: she’s dead, not like this dirge staining the air….I, her water child keep watch over her laminated Saviour, nailed into the wall flipping a coin whose head promises Daedalus. Someone pries open an album, the cocoon postcards wail on the line, pronouncing Aunt May”.

Peepal Tree Press (UK), published Far District which is his first full book. This publisher specialises in Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies.

Hutchinson performed at this year’s Calabash literary festival the largest islandwide literary event. He enrolled in PhD studies at the University of Utah. He is also a recipient of the Derek Walcott Fellowship, a Calabash Literary Fellowship, and a Cropper Foundation Fellowship. His poetry and essays have appeared in such publications as Callaloo Journal, Caribbean Review of Books, Expressions, The LA Review, Poetry International, The Wolf Magazine, Southern Humanities Review and Pathway. In 2006, the Calabash Trust Fund published his chapbook, Bryan’s Bay.