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

when the island
turned us against each other
Lord of the Flies

Marion Clarke
Warrenpoint, N Ireland

 

Alzheimer’s—
the cocoon she lives in
amongst friends

Nisha Raviprasad
India

 

moonlit island
all my tan lines go
black & white

Patricia Hawkhead
Bradford on Avon, UK

 

island shoreline
closer to myself
than i’ve been in awhile

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, WA

 

desert winds—
an oasis shimmers
with microplastics

Terri L. French
US

 

report on beached whales the silent sands

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
Verona, Italy

 

lonely island
waves keep bringing
what I can’t possess

Aparna Pathak
Gurugram, India

 

sea level rise
every island
for itself

Helen Ogden
Pacific Grove, CA

 

Isle of Shoals . . .
ghosts dance inside
the closed grande hotel

Pris Campbell
U.S.

 

island of peace
how it fell apart
when dad left

Kathabela Wilson
USA

 

fallen leaves
his airpods tuning out
the tolling bell

Archie G. Carlos
Minnesota

 

brave space
Jackson’s Island—
for Huck and Jim

Alan Harvey
Tacoma, WA

 

somewhere a planet
has no war
in its dictionary

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

last frame
before my death
azure-blue of Elba

Luciana Moretto
Treviso Italy

 

the lizard and I
two frightened creatures
on a stone path

Anica Marcelic
Zapresic, Croatia

 

white pebble beach—
pine needles conceal
a discarded needle

Sanjana Zorinc
Croatia

 

tropical island night
my old sink
leaks endlessly

Dejan Ivanović
Lazarevac, Serbia

 

rabbit hole in one

Ravi Kiran
Hyderabad, India

 

island road
bending east out of darkness
j’ouvert dancers

(j’ouvert is a Caribbean celebration with roots in emancipation; j’ouvert is Creole French for daybreak)

Kate MacQueen
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

 

this earth
not a single day without
its moon

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Germany

 

paradise lost
in all the apples
worms

Andrew Pineo
Exeter NH, USA

 

now and then
his words of love
tidal islands

Jahnavi Gogoi
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

 

post stroke brain
islands of thoughts
without an anchor

Debbie Sterling
Oregon, USA

 

desert island
I swim deeper into
the lacuna

Jenn Ryan-Jauregui
Tucson, Arizona

 

atoll’s high tide line
I watch the approaching
shock wave

Lee Hudspeth
United States

 

November rain—
the new colossus
weeps

Sean Murphy
North Beach, MD

 

off-grid
the deep intakes
of peace lily

Kanjini Devi
The Far North, Aotearoa NZ

 

glass domes
island sky
sold by the hour

Sandip Chauhan
United States

 

silver anniversary . . .
will this island
bring us close again

Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

 

children
safe at school
utopia

Jennifer Gurney
US

 

traffic jam
at the roundabout
in our dream island

Zoltan Pachnik
Hungary

 

on the rice field
my palms, my feet
touching the cracks

Anthony Rabang
Philippines

 

real life lost boys
prove William Golding wrong
… and there was light

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

 

axis shift
the earth takes back
all that is given

Robert Kingston
Chelmsford, UK

 

woken by birdsong not a ping utopian sunrise

Rupa Anand
New Delhi, India

 

if only no diseases
my whole family . . .
in one frame

Ruth H. Hermosa
Oriental Mindoro, Philippines

 

rush hour
in a sea of people
I become an island

Mirela Brailean
Iasi, Romania

 

desert island discs—
another day alone
with my bad back

Adele Evershed
Wilton, CT

 

ink dries where a voice was

Vijay Prasad
Patna, India

 

island getaway
with spotty Wi-Fi
I troll the wildlife

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY, USA

 

my secret island
hiding place
from myself

Refika Dedić
Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

island getaway
a message in the bottle
from myself

Neena Singh
India

 

no rescue
on the horizon
so many false suns

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

logging in
to my utopian side
code Venus

Daya Bhat
India

 

bird sanctuary
all wings clipped
for safety

Nitu Yumnam
UAE

 

floating world we circle the station wagons

Anne Fox
Broomes Island, MD USA

 

waiting
for the roses to bloom again . . .
senility

in attesa
che le rose rifioriscano . . .
senilità

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

…………….cobalt

azure…island…sapphire

…………….indigo

John S Green
Bellingham, Washington USA

 

serene island
this monastic life
of a turtle

Jagajit Salam
Imphal, India

 

growing
between us
islands

Biswajit Mishra
Canada

 

from the isle of we
to the land of you and I . . .
currents of life

Natalia Kuznetsova
Russia

 

first snow
the borders of our island
closed

Melissa Dennison
UK

 

closed eyes
seeing light
the I land

Kavita Ratna
India

 

lonely island
an apple the deer
left for me

Lori Kiefer
UK

 

memories fade
but I still miss you
petals in the air

Tsanka Shishkova
Sofia, Bulgaria

 

Hawaii karaoke
he hands me a wildflower
for a mic

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh India

 

art gallery
I choose my canvas
find utopia

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

please beam me
to a skerry with autumn
colored larches

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

the rise and fall
of dystopias . . .
young adult novels

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

new moon night
I ask the ocean
about my double life

Nalini Shetty
Mumbai, India

 

island lighthouse hope out of darkness

Ann Sullivan
Arlington MA USA

 

outer island
barbwire ashore
refuge(e) camp

Martina Matijević
Vidovci, Croatia

 

recurring dream—
Atlantis again
over the ocean

Stoianka Bioanova
Bulgaria

 

the first steps
of evolution—
adventures of Beagle

Minko Tanev
Bulgaria

 

blue lagoon—
not even the dreams
want to leave

Dan C. Iulian
Romania

 

seclusion in the grass
a tick in search of the roots
of my alienation

Ivan Georgiev
Germany

 

a world of haiku writers gathering (k)utopia

susan burch
Hagerstown, MD

 

green rooftop
a child plants hope
in concrete dust

Eddie Dean
Cottonwood, California

 

last leaves—
packing up new world
dreams

Jonathan English
Washington, DC

 

deforestation
the call of the hornbill
scarce

Lakshmi Iyer
India

 

old haunts
in the Left Bank café
a familiar shadow

Annie Wilson
Shropshire, UK

 

Dad’s dementia
Exiled
From his own mind.

Lakshmi R Srinivas
Hyderabad, India

 

new age dawn
the glimmer of coins
in each beggar’s bowl

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

autumn
father vows to survive the last leaf—
we stick it down

herfst
vader zweert het laatste blad te overleven—
we kleven het

Guido De Pelsmaeker
België (Holsbeek)

 

comfy cushions in
the new stove’s cardboard box
with The Bobbsey Twins

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

silent stars
in all this ocean
only us

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

my handmade kite
climbing toward a cloud
the snap of a string

Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina

 

silent island—
what I thought was wisdom
slips through my hands

Fatma Zohra Habis
Algeria

 

lone tent on the shore
the storm’s only answer
to my silence

Maya Daneva
The Netherlands

 

war news
space station in disguise
as a shooting star

Hynek Koziol
Czech Republic

 

in our full houses
Robinson Crusoes
having fun making do

Linda Powers O’Dell
Richmond, VA

 

the playful words
of my mom with Alzheimer’s . . .
our island

Mircea Moldovan
România

 

sunken island . . .
waves scatter the silence
of ship wreckage

Ivan Gaćina
Zadar, Croatia

 

a foot
in both camps
grey nomad

Carol Reynolds
Australia

 

alone
in the midst of a crowd
the joy of people watching

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Alabama

 

market vendors
call out their wares
islands in the stream

Christine Goodnough
Delisle, SK, Canada

 

heather firesmoke settles around absence

C.X. Turner
UK

 

social leper
banished to Moloka’i
to suffer and die

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL USA

 

island resort—
no vacations
for the workers

Elizabeth Shack
Illinois, USA

 

fog whispers the island

Nancy Orr
Lewiston, ME, USA

 

the Eden island
suddenly a hell
no unknown spots

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

pricked by thorns
among elysium’s roses
my achilles heel

Margaret Anderson
Vancouver, BC

 

traveling
in a spaceship
with buddha

Tejendra Sherchan
Nepal

 

my Ukraine, now dystopian
every peace talk
a lamp on my altar

Lakshman Bulusu
Princeton, NJ, USA

 

fog over Ellis
what is
yet not

Sangita Kalarickal
United States

 

Xanadu
or Dante’s levels
slippers click

Stephen J. DeGuire
Los Angeles, CA

 

a key
no longer fits
islets of Langerhans

Madeleine Kavanagh
United States

 

downsizing
a fistful of people
fighting for pieces

Wendy C. Bialek
US

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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Photo Credit:

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.