HAIKU DIALOGUE – Island as Metaphor – No One is an Island – long list

Island as Metaphor with Guest Editor Marietta McGregor

Islands in literature are often used as metaphors for isolation, escape, refuge and solitude. They can be places where our dream is to start anew, leaving behind trappings of a previous life and reinventing a whole new existence. Or they can be places of control, of imprisonment. We may think of Napoleon exiled to Elba, or the Birdman of Alcatraz. Islands have been used as lazarettos or prisons in far-flung lands such as the Venetian lagoon and in Tasmania. Islands also abound in mythology. The island of Ithaca was reputed to be Odysseus’s home. In their journeys, Odysseus and his men were beset by diverse perils, among them the Sirens whose unearthly songs tempted men to cast themselves to their deaths. To this day, a group of jagged rocky islets off the Amalfi coast, Li Galli, carry the name Sirenusas. Theseus abandoned the pregnant Ariadne on the Cycladic Island of Naxos, where she perished. Victorian literature, notably Robinson Crusoe, also features islands. These were tales of valour, self-sufficiency and survival against the odds, where a lone adventurer battles hostile islanders, bizarre creatures, hunger, isolation and exposure. Our bodies even have their own secret islands: the islets of Langerhans are clusters of endocrine cells within our pancreas that secrete vital hormones including insulin. We can think of the landscape of our brains in terms of islands of activity, areas where each of our senses is processed and interpreted.

Below is Marietta’s selection of poems on the topic of No One is an Island:

island chain
once upon a time
we were one

John Hawkhead
UK

 

sandbar
why burn
bridges

Lorelyn Arevalo
Bombon, Philippines

 

island holiday
a man of oak
rises from the mist

Robert Kingston
Chelmsford United Kingdom

 

desert island
further away than ever before
our peace

Eva Limbach
Germany

 

shattered harmony—
a single domino’s
chain reaction

Paul Callus
Ħal Safi, Malta

 

growing old
I own my space
not (h)island

Lakshmi Iyer
India

 

fantasy island
so that’s where my childhood
went

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, WA

 

Cushions on the floor—
an adventurous child
island hopping

Caroline Ridley-Duff
UK

 

driftwood choir
each log
remembers a voice

Eddie Dean
Cottonwood, California

 

Godrevy Lighthouse—
the grey Atlantic
breaks through my thoughts

Penny Lowery
Devon, UK

 

komodo island—
diving into the pink
to swim with sharks

Katherine E Winnick
Brighton UK

 

every party
her kitchen island
desserted

Curt Linderman
Seattle

 

family
from three islands
birthday bash

Eavonka Ettinger
Long Beach, CA

 

wild island
boys hunting boars
boys hunting boys

Ann Rawson
Scotland, UK

 

sudden wind—
the islet sways
in lavender scent

Sanjana Zorinc
Croatia

 

crossing the sea
to find my heritage
Formosa

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, California

 

pulling
away from the dock
last ferry

Jenn Ryan-Jauregui
Tucson Arizona USA

 

tea and a book
stepping into
a private island

Ravi Kiran
India

 

dawn dream
our last dance to
‛islands in the stream’

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, lndia

 

paralyzed
she island hops
life’s little pleasures

Debbie Sterling
Oregon, USA

 

dark room
trapped by the siren songs
in my head

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
India

 

sardine sky
we spread out, float-running
turf and tussocks

Sheila Barksdale
Gotherington, U.K.

 

sending messages
to the cosmos
blue planet castaways

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

 

spring after the war
can she just step outside
her high bed now?

Urszula Marciniak
Poland

 

blood not thicker
so much water between us
in this family

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

 

in solitude . . .
the sad song says
so much

Manoj Sharma
Kathmandu, Nepal

 

grieving process
bobbing between two islands,
loss and recovery

rouwproces
dobberen tussen twee eilanden,
verlies en herstel

Guido De Pelsmaeker
België (Holsbeek)

 

Delos
guiding my steps
an Olympian shadow

Andrew Pineo
Exeter NH USA

 

how I read
one book after another
island hopping

Mike Stinson
Great Plains

 

snow islands . . .
the cold grass aroused
into green

Barrie Levine
Massachusetts, USA

 

sunlight
striking marble
my lost islands

Ruth Holzer
Potomac Falls, VA

 

crowded bar
inescapable
invisibility

Olivier Schopfer
Geneva, Switzerland

 

stuck
in this small town
gravity

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA, USA

 

island floats
on crème anglaise
fata morgana

Stephen J. DeGuire
Los Angeles, CA

 

fog and chowder
hitching a ride
to Aquinnah

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

flooded causeway
the damp gaze
of widowhood

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

alone together
among the myriad—
Shinjuku station

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA

 

postpartum depression
i become a shrinking
island

Jahnavi Gogoi
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

 

my shyness the once island submerged

Sumitra Kumar
India

 

island inn’s window . . .
a thought coming
and receding

Keiko Izawa
Japan

 

full moon
the night deepens
in a heart-to-heart

Anthony Rabang
Philippines

 

this island
only by ferry or boat
his son’s grave

John S Green
Bellingham, Washington, USA

 

prison yard—
escorted by
a butterfly

Dan C. Iulian
Romania

 

island dusk . . .
the tide carries whispers
i thought were mine

Vijay Prasad
Patna, India

 

family visits
our ship maneuvers through
the archipelago

Jessica Allyson
Ottawa, Canada

 

just like that . . . he bakes a cake for his colleagues

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

a seashell . . .
listening to the wind
of distant lands

Daniela Misso
Italy

 

long after dusk
a lighthouse beam
curls inside me

Neena Singh
India

 

reading the marked pages
of each other’s favorite books . . .
island hopping

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

those of us
who never left
island cemetery

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois

 

logging on
from my own private island
zoom meeting

thomas david
United Kingdom

 

walking past
my only neighbor—
a shipwreck

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

Corsica morning
February sun glitters
on the soft sea

Susan Farner
USA

 

the sandbar my haven
poems drafted at low tide
surrounded by seagulls

Helen Sokolsky
New York, NY

 

widow
I am my own island
content with the waves

Linda Powers O’Dell
Richmond, VA

 

spanish moss whispers
at the old shell ring
all our previous lives

Margaret Anderson
Vancouver, BC

 

islander
living to tell my story
with a dance

Kathabela Wilson
California, USA

 

Ellis Island
the gangway handrail pulls
back and forth

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

 

blue island
this lonesome ocean
of stars

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

grandma’s voice . . .
her cottage
an island of tulips

Fatma Zohra Habis
Algeria

 

silence
in a bell ringing
no one is alone

silenzio
in un suono di campana
nessuno è solo

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

grebe chicks leaving
their mother’s back—
first day of school

Michael Pappafava
Belgium

 

off season island—
every window facing
the sea

Orense Nicod
Paris, France

 

monsoon island—
a fisherman’s radio
crackles with cricket scores

Nalini Shetty
Mumbai, India

 

driftwood
will I too be
all alone?

Nitu Yumnam
UAE

 

linking islands
new friends pull my desk across
to join theirs

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

island hopping
each friend a port
in my storm

Anne Fox
Broomes Island, MD USA

 

Shipwreck Bay
sea turtle hatchlings
scramble over sand ripples

Louise Hopewell
Australia

 

Inishfree
touching base with
my ancestors

Lori Kiefer
London UK

 

me
myself
an’
isle
a
pen
insula(r)

Helen Buckingham
United Kingdom

 

family wedding
stepping out of my island
no longer an expatriate

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

 

barrier islands
the shifting sand
of dad’s lost words . . .

Adele Evershed
Wilton, Connecticut

 

two reefs
yet both of us
have a dream

Maya Daneva
The Netherlands

 

New Guinea—
Amelia Earhart flies off
into immortality

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

family gathering
trapped in a spider’s web
my memories

Geetha Ravichandran
India

 

tidal cave only the seal’s cry returns

C.X. Turner
U.K.

 

island of one
the conversations I have
with myself

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

dumped by my boyfriend
i play Paul Simon records
islands never cry

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL USA

 

rising sea mist
I begin to know
the ghost of you

Annie Wilson
Shropshire, UK

 

marooned . . .
all the time I need
for solitude

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

nearing Ithaca––
will my ancient dog
still know me?

Sheila Sondik
Bellingham, Washington

 

in recovery
things I need or hate
within reach

Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina

 

Nantucket Lightship Basket
full of her knitting
scented with the Sound

Ron Scully
Burien WA

 

neverland—
here I am offline
at last

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

crossing the gulf
between sunflowers—
goldfinch

Elizabeth Shack
Illinois

 

left on the shelf—
the banana detached
from the bunch

susan burch
Hagerstown, MD

 

after the storm
I’m with the other lost birds
uncharted island

Mary Beth Defer
Rocklin, CA

 

afternoon sun
far out on the breakwater
napping

Lev Hart
Calgary, Canada

 

splitting up
friends become
family

Nancy Brady
Huron, Ohio

 

alone now
time to make
my new tomorrow

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

getting through
reruns
of Gilligan’s Island

Madeleine Kavanagh
Northern California

 

empty dawn beach
on sand I practice
the word sorry

Richard L. Matta
San Diego, California USA

 

all i know from the Ferris wheel of Coney Island

Wendy C. Bialek
USA

 

alone in the room
after the island sunset
leftover rice grain

Amoolya Kamalnath
India

Join us next week for Marietta’s commentary on additional poems…

Bios:

Guest editor Marietta McGregor is a retired Tasmanian botanist and journalist who has made her home between Canberra and the scenic south coast of New South Wales for over four decades. A lover of the natural world since childhood, she went on to study biological sciences, and has worked as palynologist, garden designer, science journalist, editor, university tutor, education manager, and grants developer for the national wildlife collection. Her haiku, haibun and haiga have been widely published, have won awards and appear in anthologies.

Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Banner photo credit:  Marietta McGregor

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.