Almost Island will host the 16th Almost Island Dialogues, a three-day gathering of international poets and writers from April 10 to April 12, 2026 at the G5A Warehouse in Mumbai. The 2026 Dialogues will feature international poets and writers: Don Mee Choi (South Korea/US); Najwan Darwish (Palestine); Ales Steger (Slovenia); Vyomesh Shukla (Varanasi); Sampurna Chattarji (Mumbai); Mantra Mukim (Raipur/Oxford); and Sharmistha Mohanty (Mumbai).

Here are some poems by the invited poets:

Lightning Writes Poetry

by Najwan Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Lightning never sits down at a table
to write poetry
yet it is poetry’s only embodiment.
It lights up the whole universe
then disappears
What poet hasn’t dreamed
Of becoming lightning?

Time Is

by Aleš Šteger, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry

Time is a migratory bird.
Man has
The genome of a stone.

From DMZ Colony

Orphan Kim Seong-rye

(Age 15)

by Don Mee Choi

I saw countless charred bodies. I saw rows and rows of corpses. A year later on a rainy summer day I heard cries from the pit. Oblong oblong. I saw ghosts floating about in the forest. They circled and circled me.

A Thousand Parents

by Sampurna Chattarji

A boy with hair
might be construed
the last of the series.
The difference between
the scrupulously clean
hands and the dull pain
of distance is quite
clear and complete.
The light never came back
on the lower slopes
among the rain clouds.
All this is as it should be.
One’s attachment took
the place of words.
I have a thousand parents
Angular and cryptic.

Broken

by Sharmistha Mohanty

A reeling earth, billowing seas
monsoon in every room

a fatal century
become tremor in our hands

each of us undone
by what we...

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