Island to Island

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• CoverIsland to Island
• Island to Island ParticipantsAdil Hafezji Althea Poserio Elijah Brown
• Page 3Island to Island
• Table of ContentsIntroduction Rimmuel Fanasan
• Page 5Milliscent Lucio.. The Earth Goes To A Salon
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• IntroductionTwo cities on two distant islands, a literature and performance arts charity, an independent bookshop, six Thursdays of writing and conversation and eleven amazing young poets. Island to Island was a unique digital cultural exchange spearheaded by the women behind Young Identity in Manchester and Mt Cloud Bookshop in Baguio City. Island to Island convened online conversations and writing sessions on climate change, resilience and poetry. The eleven participants who showed up in the zoom meetings for Island to Island (afternoons in the UK, evenings in the Philippines) enriched one another's understanding of the polycrisis and how we are to live in these times. They brought their hearts, minds and histories to bear on questions of home, place, belonging, loss and the state of the planet. The zine you are holding in your hands (or reading on a screen) is the written culmination of those magical Thursday meetings. Beyond these pages, eleven young poets hold memories of one another and of online encounters in which each participant was a window into the land, water, beings, communities and islands that hold each one and everyone.
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• Page 9Island to Island
• Page 10Tahanan home. it taste like broth in a rainy saturday afternoon. it's where my sorrows dissolve all tears turn to laughter home is a feeling a sanctuary as tender as when my mom's voice sing softly, lovingly: ‘tahan na Rimmuel Fanasan
• The Forest Writes Me BackIn a crumpled paper I wrote a letter to the forest
• Page 1210 murky i walked past the bridge.
• Page 13when i arrived, i saw: it was not dance they did, but egrets dodging the trash that drifted downstream when i arrived, i saw:
• Page 14Shreya Mishra
• Namma NagarThe lakes of Bangalore, Once overflowing with biodiversity; Supplied freshwater to the homes that stood its banks. Lush greenery covered the city. The air was pure, Filling our bodies with the scent of damp soils. The city of lakes, we called it once
• Ancestral NomadsMy family comes from fertile land Harvesting mangoes, toiling under the sun
• The Cost of ColonisationManchester, a place I now call home was once built on the backs of my ancestors. The textile industry that grew England's wealth, once starved my great grandparents. The white man's greed for Indigo bled the fertile soil of my land dry.
• Page 18Jeff David
• SAKUNA sakunâ nounA thorn in the heart. Misfortune. Calamity. Disaster.
• "bahay lumubog bago dumating pamahalaan"House sank. Government arrived late. Bodies first. Words after. translation splintered → subject gone → verb floated agent arrived late Structure collapsed; meaning followed. IV. semantics / erosion bayan nation → barangay → evacuation center memory → gone tulong speech promise absent → drowned
• Page 21the dead were never pluralized only listed then lost grief had no marker no tense no clean boundary the river kept the names the soil learned the bodies the air carried what could not be buried Jeff David we stopped counting when the numbers began to sound like rain
• Page 22To-Do List: Step onto grass they said was off-limits
• In the eyesThere's something swirling in our yard, pushing trees and pulling at the shadows. It howls at our windows and makes the roof tremble. Nanay says it'll pass, but this one keeps knocking on our house with fists made of wind, that make the daylight thin.
• Page 24Rayaan Kassim
• The Living LandI'm sitting on the floor My legs pressed into my bum My toes tingle, greedy for air
• Page 2624 Malaay
• The rain that fallsIs blocked out of this scene This fort is impenetrable It's made of concrete and steel
• Page 28Althea Poserio
• SubmergedWe watch as the waters rise where we SOW our dreams, as storms feast on crocodiles' greed.
• AndiditsDedicated to my grandfather and to Filipino farmers who lived most of their lives as slaves of the soil. Tatang used to tell me the lives of the andidits. Born as nymphs beneath the soil's thin skin, they grew familiar with darkness and learned the virtue of waiting. Once the earth finally warms and loosens, they split the ground open and rise only to shrivel under the soil's final sentence. Seventeen years burrowed; seven weeks borrowed. The soil is a tender tyrant; it gives and takes in the same breath, as tatay used to say. It raises the andidits only to let them learn that being born is not the same as belonging; for belonging is never bestowed, only borrowed. And maybe Tatang and the andidits are not so different after all. Both are burrowed and bound, tethered to a land fenced by empires that merely changed names. Perhaps that is why they sing so fiercely in that brief moment of their lives- so the soil may remember who it once held.
• If the Creek Can SpeakMy banks Wrinkle like old Skin. My ripples cries In cracks, like voice's remembering the sun, the rain, and the feet that once graced вит поша that greets me. ALL me
• Page 32Elijah Brown
• Root of EvilYesterday I learned what it's like to drown. Not in the movies way; there were no rivers, no crying parents, no roaring tides or tsunamis, Hans Zimmer didn't beat out from speakers over the footage. It was silent, mostly.
• Saving Rye Bank Fields morningmourn soft sweetsong wingflap thighbrush greengoldI don't know many more. but... no, wait, give me time, let me think!
• Page 35Please. I want to live.
• Empty / Deeplook -A response to Rayaan Kassim Net drags screaming drowning choking dying dead thing mad thing bad thing fish thing
• Page 37Milliscent Lucio
• Page 3836 The Earth Goes To A Salon
• Urban PlaygroundSkip, skip, skip Sidking palda on the concrete Between canals
• Page 40Linnae Abraham
• My land of dreamsEven if they weren't planted here, my feet try to grip the sand as they sink until I feel the prick of my roots in the dunes. I want to be unbothered by the stabbing but I know comfort isn't deserved. To be a part of my peoples, like the foam on the waves, to be folded in and dissipate like my Taho man with sticks of sticky treats.
• TanagaSimple homes crumple and drift. No one's responsible, right? We can't control nature's might. Nor the money they shift. Linnae Abraham
• Page 43Rhanydell Bien Baysa
• Return to KalingaIn the empire's wildest fantasies, I am a specter. I bring back the bones a sign of what? Defiance? Having, in the stolen mountains, remembered your hunger?
• Critical Clues on Navigating the Baguio City Public MarketCritical Clues on Navigating the Baguio City Public Market after Adam David where there lies wideness where there lies kwa Notes
• Page 46Trees Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.
• Page 47Adil Hafezn
• Page 4804/12/2025 My object is water, water doesn't necessarily change over seasons, but we tend to see a lot more of it as the seasons pass. During summer we drink a lot more because of the heat, during autumn and winter rain drastically increases.
• Page 4918/12/2025 The human body is made up of 90% water which means it requires water to survive.
• Page 5022/01/2026 The noise of the crowd, oh so loud, yet magical. Strangers sing and stand and scream but we are family, yet I have no connection to my neighbour. What's his story? What's her name? So different yet the bond we're the same. Home is where the heart is, so treat my heart like your own, don't treat me like a guest.
• Page 51Nene Cadiog
• where mama is, that is homeWhere Mama is, that is home. Before dawn, fog kisses the soil, lingering in the kadkad and alnus trees, lingering in furrows and on terrace edges, soft as her hands, steady as her voice.
• Page 53I sit at dawn, The Vegetable Gardener watching the fog curl over the terraces, white threads over green ribs of the valley. One typhoon last week, one dry spell after, and still, the soil waits. My mother moves in the uma, hands worn, palms split and red, pressing seeds into the earth with a quiet certainty. Her fingers know the soil like it knows her. Row after row of repolyo, patatas― each furrow a small offering, each seed a silent promise.
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• Page 55The Word for Soil is Never Just One Word luta luta luta and suddenly the ground speaks Kankanaey, soft vowels sprinkled like early rain. daga daga daga the Ilokano tongue thickens it, gives the earth a heavier heartbeat.
• Page 56the old name, the earth before we started arguing about who owned what. 54
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