HAIKU DIALOGUE – Surrealism II – “Without Hope” – long list

Surrealism II with Guest Editor Lafcadio

For the next few weeks I would like to be your docent again in The Haiku Foundation Art museum. We will continue our tour of the Surrealist gallery. I know we were there last year, but now I’d like to show you a few of the works of the female Surrealist painters. First, let’s have a quick review about surrealism to make sure we are all on the same page, or in the same room. Surrealism is an artistic movement that began in the early 20th century. Surrealistic painters created dreamlike and often inexplicable images. One of the major characteristics of this kind of painting is the comparison of unrelated entities and components. This creates a surprise for the viewer and hopefully carries them into a world of fantasy and symbolism. This technique of painting not only challenged traditional painting, but was also a representation of the social and political upheavals of society after the trauma and disillusionment of World War I. Still, surrealistic paintings are used today to transcend the boundaries of the ordinary and deliver us in the realm of the extraordinary.

In 1924 Andre Breton, known as the father of Surrealism, wrote his first Surrealist Manifesto. He stated that 19 painters had created art that was absolute Surrealism. None of these painters were female. These painters felt women were useful to them as muses and inspiration but not as artists in their own right. However, by 1985 it was determined that no other art movement had such a large number of women participants. As Surrealist art grew into a larger and more diverse group of men, women became interested in expressing themselves through this art movement. Most of the first women who entered the Surrealistic movement were lovers of male Surrealists.

As with the previous male painters we have viewed, there is so much abstraction and symbolism in the drawings and paintings that you will be able to create surrealistic haiku and senryu that reflect the emotions in these works of art. Let’s begin…

Below is Lafcadio’s selection of poems on the topic of “Without Hope”:

shutdown
by my zipped-up coat
& santa’s lap

Curt Linderman
Seattle

 

holding
an invisible tulip
what a noise does it make

Boryana Boteva
Sofia, Bulgaria

 

shadows seep through the walls
something grows stronger
inside me

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Germany

 

smiles flipping
in a broken mirror
convex to concave

Vaishnavi Ramaswamy
India

 

the gray rock abyss
between what kills and
what strengthens

Urszula Marciniak
Poland

 

unless
you nod to life
you are attached

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
Verona – Italy

 

swallowing the moon
an onyx night
with no north star

marilyn ashbaugh
usa

 

minefield
in the hollow of an oak tree
a newborn and a bible

Tsanka Shishkova
Bulgaria

 

migraine attack –
a whirling beast
raises its head

Sanjana Zorinc
Croatia, Bjelovar

 

a witch’s cauldron
runs down the throat
trapped breath

Radhika De Silva
Sri Lanka

 

trapped
in my own existence
dead animal

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

 

imbibing
words of encouragement
intravenous drip

Paul Callus
Malta

 

doctors poke and prod
hope stands in the outfield
far from her grasp

Veronica Hosking
Avondale, AZ

 

meat moon
the funnel drips
her own body

Vijay Prasad
Patna, India

 

alone in a crowd
at night I hear the wolves call
as if they know me

John Hawkhead
UK

 

writing poems
eyes, blood, and bones
in my word vomit

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, California

 

a pregnant dog sneaks
into the confessional
the cold

Cindy Putnam Guentherman
Loves Park, Illinois, USA

 

I plant screams in my garden then water them with dust

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

–trigeminal neuralgia–
–the addictive power
––of the covid mask–

Helen Buckingham
United Kingdom

 

tremor of sunlight
evil torn up
by root

Luciana Moretto
Italy

 

after his passing
feeding me with
their platitudes

Jahnavi Gogoi
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

 

s c r e a m i n g
inside my entrails
vegan manifesto

Terri L. French
Alabama, US

 

decomposing
in depression lake
algal blooms

Pamela Garry
Connecticut USA

 

at last count murmuration

Erin Castaldi
New Jersey

 

oncology wing
a snapped twig
in a jar of water

Nitu Yumnam
UAE

 

painting
within the dark void
cenotaph

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA, USA

 

modern day slave
her shackled personality
takes the Middle Path

Hla Yin Mon
Yangon, Myanmar

 

hospice kitchen
the aroma of antibiotic
in the chicken stew

R. Suresh Babu
India

 

the world unravels
like an old sweater
never worn again

Terri Thorfinnson
West Sacramento, CA

 

umbilical cord
my daughter’s life tied
to the feeding tube

Mirela Brailean
Iasi, Romania

 

a feather from the sky
for the wound that I have
to stop touching

Goda Virginija Bendoraitienė
Lithuania

 

bed and breakfast—
the black bird and i
fattened on sorrow

Adele Evershed
Wilton, CT

 

an ache…
my mind goes running
through cool night air

Tony Williams
Scotland, UK

 

engagement end
without Ariadne’s string
walking the labyrinth

Andrew Pineo
Exeter NH

 

painted bed
another piece of sky
forced down

Nalini Shetty
Mumbai, India

 

stone fruit
I throw myself
a lifeline

Jenn Ryan Jauregui
Tucson Arizona USA

 

his long infusions
the fluttering wings
of lipstick angels

Kathabela Wilson
USA

 

X
X
X

Kelly Sargent
Williston, VT, USA

 

force feeding
the paralyzed mind
social media

Ravi Kiran
India

 

cuckoo egg tossing
out of the nest
and into the void

Alan Harvey
Tacoma, WA

 

mosquito kiss
suddenly I have
four hands

Anica Marcelic
Zapresic, Croatia

 

me and my aestivational rip tide

simonj
UK

 

old voodoo doll trapped in a needle’s m(eye)graine

susan burch
Hagerstown, MD

 

Meat is the way
all the well-trimmed lawns
and wildfire smoke

Diana Gallardo
Oak Park, IL

 

the battle inside
after all the skulls of ’45
a peachy sun

Adrian Bouter
The Netherlands

 

on blankets
the weight of double moons

Sharon Ferrante
Florida, USA

 

flamingo crèche
a monochrome to technicolor
trek

Charles Harper
Yokohama

 

early harvest
and below the tree
detruded nest

Zoltan Pachnik
Hungary

 

a daisy chain
of dead babies rings her wrist
only she sees them

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

 

bulging walls
parting words on stretcher

kiti saarinen
tampere, finland

 

bedbound
too tired to fight off
the skull crushers

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

imprisoned in my own body :: blown fuse in the whale’s belly

Shloka Shankar
India

 

this last surgery
some cicada song
stitched in

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois

 

the desert owl i’d like to fly with insomnia

Lee Hudspeth
United States

 

mango seeds
clot my Ganga heart
deafening silence

Victor Ortiz
Bellingham, WA

 

weighted blanket
a monster comes out
from under the bed

Thomas David
United Kingdom

 

one day up :: one day down
feelings are fickle passengers
night train to nowhere

Rupa Anand
New Delhi, India

 

a funnel foie gras force-feeding

Guido De Pelsmaeker
Belgium (Holsbeek)

 

hospital bed –
dead fish eyes
staring beyond

Minko Tanev
Bulgaria

 

cocooned
by bedsheets
a slurry of days

Rich Schilling
United States

 

the only spring in the desert – her eyes

Ivan Georgiev
Germany

 

stalked…
his hand strips the petals
from my compass rose

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

spitting stars
pinned with steel bound in bed
to shoot for the moon

Kirk Lawson
Accord, NY

 

shooting stars
my august bail-out
on summer’s tail

Daya Bhat
India

 

bird’s wings
my eyebrows
don’t fly away

Nazarena Rampini
Italy

 

Billie Frida
strange fruit hangs
from the branch easel

John S Green
Bellingham, Washington

 

sepia dream
nightmares slurry through
the oracle’s mouth

Biswajit Mishra
Canada

 

I folded my lust
into a butterfly
ash in the flames

Alex Fyffe
Texas, USA

 

I often long
to walk on the moon
losing my legs

Tejendra Sherchan
Nepal

 

aging in place
orphaned crone
treads water

Sigrid Saradunn
Maine, USA

 

gagging
the nightingale in me
porcelain funnel

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh India

 

from a plastic bag
a limb a lung a lamb
downstairs

Bittor Duce Zubillaga
Basque Country

 

a woman still
hibiscus blooming
in the body bag

Ella Aboutboul
West Sussex, UK

 

magnetic rhythms
with veins aglow I disappear
down the wormhole

Melissa Dennison
UK

 

slow descent
I carry the mountain
in my voice

Lori Kiefer
UK

 

a rosary of burning moons BRCA genes

Vidya Premkumar
India

 

one last hack
the crystal tree
seems to bend

Geetha Ravichandran
India

 

bedridden
dusk kindles again
my pyre

Cezar-Florin Ciobîcă
Romania

 

you, semi-conscious
limbs in the wreckage
the breeze, a songless Koel

(Koel, a songbird from India that sings melodiously)

Lakshman Bulusu
Princeton, NJ, USA

 

fog-filled sanatorium
the hoarse cry of
a raven

Mohammad Azim Khan
Peshawar, Pakistan

 

my heart
cupped in my hands
flutters to escape

Annie Wilson
Shropshire, UK

 

easy game . . .
snared by snakeskin
checkerboard is toast

(Early summer season word, kigo 季語: snakeskin, snake skin, hebi no kinu 蛇の衣.  The World Kigo Database by Dr. Gabi Greve, Daruma Museum, Japan, is my primary almanac (saijiki) for kigo and muki, footnotes about kigo, and for translation of kigo and muki into English.)

Monica Kakkar
India

 

memory’s moon the empty corner of a humming

Richa Sharma
India

 

slow swallowing…
the dead fish eye sees
the sun and moon in the desert

Swarna Bopali de Zoysa
Sri Lanka

 

mountain lake wading—
solid gold sunlight swirls
with every step

Elizabeth Shack
Illinois

 

molten daisies
two suns peeling
through a raw sky

Sandip Chauhan
USA

 

Land of Oz –
from the rabbit wormhole
Alice emerges

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

her features
spoon after spoon
of fish oil

Hynek Koziol
Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic

 

rage made of feathers
centaurs gallop on cake tops
dada is dada

Rebeca Thomas
Youngtown, Arizona

 

dizzying head –
from my giraffe neck
suddenly the world expands

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

in her vessel.
Siren silently
stitching the rent

C.R. Harper
United States

 

my blood flows
in a lighter vein
pink skies

Sumitra Kumar
India

 

Day of the Dead
crushing migraine
with my sugar skull

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL USA

 

oncology wing
a snapped twig
in a jar of water

Nitu Yumnam
UAE

 

eagle’s cry
turned our hearts
to stone

Christine D
USA

 

cat scans
in the portfolio
that held my photos

wendy c. bialek
usa

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

Bios:

Guest (& 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:  Lafcadio

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.