House of Lords and Commons: Poems

House of Lords and Commons is a poetry collection by Ishion Hutchinson, winner of the 2013 Whiting Writers' Award in poetry. The collection spans cultural and temporal boundaries, returning to the Jamaican landscape with precise lyric language. The poems examine subjects ranging from the seventeenth-century English Civil War—presented through a mythic sea wanderer—to intimate explorations of love. Hutchinson arranges contemporary experiences of home and displacement through fragmented narrative sequences and shifting perspectives, drawing on vernacular speech. The collection addresses themes of happiness, loss, and the sea's appeal, examining what is unsettling about human experience. The poems demonstrate the difficulty and courage required to navigate uncertainty and the complexities of shared human life.