HAIKU DIALOGUE – Island as Metaphor – Utopia and Dystopia – commentary

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 commentary for Utopia and Dystopia:

My grateful thanks to all the poets who responded to my “Island” prompts over the past weeks. Some of you have said you found the prompt challenging, and I greatly appreciate the careful thought you’ve all given the theme. I’ve really enjoyed the different poetic interpretations which evoked many different island facets. It was difficult selecting just a few to comment upon. I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring your own special Utopia. Happy writing, Marietta.

green revolution
a farmer grows
mushroom clouds

Lorelyn Arevalo
Bombon, Philippines

Splitting the atom was regarded as a huge scientific step offering countless benefits for humanity. Likewise, in the 1960s, “green revolution” crop productivity strategies were hailed as the solution to famine in India and other developing countries striving for agricultural self-sufficiency. Like the polluting radioactive fallout from nuclear fission over Bikini Atoll, the GR with its liberal use of chemical fertilizers and “miracle wheats” took its toll on landscapes, water, wildlife and populations. At first reading, this thought-provoking senryu seems quite gentle – we have the image of a farmer tending a cloud-like billow of fruiting fungi. Then we register a link between ‘mushroom clouds’ and a terminally damaged environment. But there is hope. With this simple nutritious crop of mushrooms many could be fed. It’s hard to write a haiku that speaks to history and links it to the future in a metaphorical way. I think this poem has succeeded well in doing that.

Serendip—
the breaking news
of economic collapse

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

We associate the word “serendipity” with good things and happy random occurrences that pop up unexpectedly. Invented by Horace Walpole in the 18th century, the word derives from Serendip, an old Persian name for Sri Lanka. But the unplanned discovery in this senryu is not benign and serendipitous but quite the opposite. From the beauty of a tropical island the juxtaposition jolts us into the harsh reality of a nation in crisis as Sri Lanka was for some years until 2024, suffering rampant inflation, fuel and medical supplies shortages and burgeoning public debt. The underlying metaphor here could be that we can choose to look only at the beautiful, and turn our faces from harsh reality until it’s almost upon us.

rice famine . . .
she remembers
the word thank you

Keiko Izawa
Japan

This poignant haiku conveys much about living and aging in just eight words. Rice is an important food in Japan. The country has not suffered a disastrous rice famine since 1783. However, after the end of WWII white rice became known among ordinary people as “silver rice” as during post-war shortages many were deprived of this beloved food which was a staple of most meals. This no doubt lingered in the memories of many, especially women who cooked food for their families. In this poem, I picture an elderly lady having a meal with her family. Perhaps she is from that post-war era of shortage. When she’s offered a meal of rice, although her mind may not be what it was, a memory which does resurface becomes the stimulus for her words of gratitude.

library carrel . . .
the close watch on my island
of banned books

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

An island of books. If one had a choice, who wouldn’t want to cast up in a place surrounded by lots of reading – utopia indeed! But whose ‘close watch’ is referred to in this senryu? It may be that of the writer who is making a last-ditch attempt to gather together works which are under imminent threat of removal from the library. Perhaps the intention is to borrow these books before they’re taken off the shelves, so they’re being squirrelled away in the writer’s library carrel as ‘my island.’ Then once safely away from the institution a future overdue notice may be conveniently overlooked and the books saved from trash. Or is the ‘close watch’ that of an officious librarian, who has their orders, an action date and a hit list of certain books, and rather disapproves of this guerrilla early removal tactic. The poem links both elements of our island – one utopian, the other profoundly dystopian.

holiday resort
the turquoise waters
teem with nurdles

Geetha Ravichandran
India

This is the first haiku I have ever read which refers to ‘nurdles,’ making it topical and truly reflective of its time. Lines 1 and 2 set an idyllic scene – we are transported somewhere tropical and warm. But all is not well in paradise. Somewhere away to sea a container bound for a plastics manufacturing factory has fallen overboard off a cargo ship. Where a snorkeler would expect to swim in clear blue waters amongst schools of brilliant fish, instead they’re overwhelmed by a myriad of tiny floating plastic microbeads swirling around them like technicolor confetti and washing up in rainbow piles on the white coral sand. These seemingly innocuous pellets ranging from 1-5 mm in diameter are the building blocks or precursors to all the plastic items humans use so freely. Non-biodegradable, nurdles absorb chemical pollutants and find their way into marine life, and hence to us. This poem deftly juxtaposes a pristine setting with a profoundly disturbing modern reality.

space colony
dismantling
a pack rat’s nest

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

I enjoyed the use of the “telescoping” juxtaposition technique employed in this charming haiku which takes us from far outer space to our own backyard. We don’t have pack rats in Australia (although we do use the term “pack rat” for someone who loves to collect things!) so I had to research what their nest would look like. And I learned their nests (middens) are marvels of engineering built of many layers of sticks, rocks and plant material all carefully sealed using the animal’s thick viscous urine which forms a hard shell, with numerous chambers, entries and exits and housing special areas reserved for defecation and storage, as well as shiny bits and pieces which the animals collect over many years. They sometimes build in inappropriate places, like the family car! Everything about a pack rat’s midden suggests exactly what features humans may need to consider incorporating in their dwellings if faced with extreme conditions on a new planet. After all, pack rats and their homes have survived for many thousands of years. Maybe we can follow suit if we branch out into space.

scuba vacation
our shadows over
the coral reef

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

I think it’s apt that we have two haiku in this week’s commentary selection which are set in tropical environments. After all, it’s the tropics which are likely to suffer some of the more extreme consequences of climate change, with tiny Pacific island chains like Tuvalu already under threat of inundation and land loss. I imagine the writer snorkeling over the flattish top of a bommie (the name for the Australian term “bombora”), or coral reef outcrop rising from the sea floor to near the surface. These coral pinnacles are underwater wonderlands of color and form, their marine life including giant clams, sea anemones, clown fish, many coral varieties, feather duster worms, sponges and sea fans, the whole area inhabited by brilliant fish. But it is not color and form that the writer remarks upon, but ‘shadows’. The physical shadows of humans who come to this place evoke environmental shadows across vulnerable parts of planet Earth, and we begin to see all is not as picture-perfect as we like to think.

distant sirens
fewer and fewer bees
on the lavender

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA

What does it take before we begin to hear/listen to warnings? In this haiku, we are in a garden surrounded by the scent of lavender. Flowering lavender beds almost vibrate with bee-hum, as bees are strongly drawn to the blue flowers and fragrance. But that’s not the benign buzz the writer hears. Instead, we are made aware of a different, more intrusive sound – ‘sirens’ – a sound that chills because it’s almost always associated with pain, loss or disruption of some sort. We’re more aware of distant siren sounds because bee-hum is stilled. We register an absence and are chilled by its implications. Are the ‘distant sirens’ a wake-up call?

Join us next week for our next prompt…

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.