“Play Wisteria for Me”: Poetry as an Augury of Tropical Future(s)

Set within diverse milieus of tropical, coastal India—in Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh—this suite of poems joins personal narratives to wider contexts, exploring everyday perspectives and experiences that reflect or hold the potential to shape futures in regions where tradition intersects with contemporary concerns. Drawing on social and political complexities as well as poetic realism, the poems emphasise speculative elements of physical and ecological precarity and the unfixedness of the self (Barron, 2019). Alluding to public health crises, environmental shifts and the psychological impacts of rapid development, the poems also address technological engagement and multispecies vitalities through depictions of changing urban and natural landscapes. With interlinking themes of solitude, longing/belonging and community, the poems navigate the liminal spaces between utopian desires and dystopian realities, mediated through personal and cultural interactions. Collectively, the poems speculate on tropical futurisms grounded in locally-rooted thermal and ecological experiences, while challenging conventions of the “futuristic” according to regional specificities. This paper moreover adds to the ongoing discussion regarding the role of creative practice as research, offering a poetry-led perspective on the potential trajectories of coastal Indian communities.