Colonial Representation of Caribbean in Rosaline Bacchus’ Haiku Poems

Abstract

The Caribbean has a long history which is reflected in their literature. The existence of Haiku poems in Caribbean literature is an interesting thing to be analyzed. The object of this research is Haiku poems written by a Caribbean poet, Rosaline Bacchus. A Haiku poem is a short poem originally from Japan, usually consisting of 5-7-5 or 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Although it is a short poem, Haiku can depict the reality and experience of Caribbean people. This research aims to describe the diction and imagery that appear in Rosaline Bacchus’s Haiku poems and to reveal the colonial representation in the poems. The researcher uses the explication theory to analyze the diction and imagery and postcolonial theory to reveal the colonial representation inside the poems. This research is descriptive qualitative research. The textual analysis method is used to find out the meaning of each line of the poem. From the analysis, it can be seen that the diction of the Haiku poems is dominated by denotative and concrete words. Denotative and concrete words help the poet to describe the situation during the Caribbean’s colonization explicitly. Besides, the poems are also dominated by visual, auditory, and kinesthetic imagery. The imagery and the diction bring the reader to feel the reality that happened during the colonization era. The researchers hope that this research will give positive contributions to the development of literature, especially Island studies.