The Odesa – UNESCO City of Literature Office continues to build bridges between UNESCO Cities of Literature and Odessa, fostering dialogue, exchange, and shared literary experience across cultures.
The latest installment focuses on Okayama, Japan, and introduces Ms. Rie Muranaka — a Japanese children’s writer and curator of the collaboration project with the MISONO Kodomo-no-Ie children’s home, where she works closely with children’s creative writing practices through the yomuhumu initiative.
In Okayama, literature is understood as something that extends beyond the page. It becomes a space for listening, healing, and shared attention. Within this approach, a collaborative initiative was launched three years ago between the city administration, welfare institutions, and academic partners: the yomuhumu project.
At the MISONO Kodomo-no-Ie children’s home, children who cannot live with their families due to difficult circumstances are invited to engage with stories and to express their inner world through language. Writing poetry is one of the ways they explore their feelings, imagination, and sense of self.
The poems presented in this project were written by elementary school children living at the home. Imagining places they have never seen, they transform simple impressions into poetic images that are at once fragile and striking. Each poem holds a moment of perception — a voice, a rhythm, a glimpse of thought — that feels both fleeting and deeply present. Even in their simplicity, these texts reflect the wholeness of a child’s inner world and the sincerity of their gaze.
The project does not aim to teach children how to write “good” poetry in a formal sense. Instead, it creates a space where words can be discovered as a form of support — where expression becomes a way of understanding oneself and connecting with others.
Aoi — 3rd-grade student
Floating
Floating in the sky
I’ve seen animals and other things there.
The animal was a duck.
Just like a duck floating on a river,
it was floating in the sky,
all alone.
The other thing was ice cream.
It was on the same day as the duck.
The ice cream was in front,
and the duck was behind it.
In space,
the duck’s beak kept getting closer and closer to the ice cream,
so maybe,
it might eat the ice cream.
Commentary by Rie Muranaka
This poem was written by Aoi, a third-grade student.
It is a gently imaginative work, quiet in tone yet full of subtle movement. The image of a duck floating alone unfolds with a softness that suggests both observation and memory, as if something once seen has drifted upward into the sky.
Aoi carefully constructs the spatial relationship between the two elements: “The ice cream was in front, and the duck was behind it.” This sense of arrangement reflects a precise and attentive way of perceiving the world — modest, orderly, and quietly affectionate.
Although ice cream cannot become a companion, the duck continues to approach it. In this slow movement, a delicate idea of relationship appears: closeness without urgency, connection without force.
At the end, the scene expands from sky to space, as if perception itself is widening. Within this shift lies a quiet sense of possibility — a small expansion of the world seen through a child’s gaze.
The project was created by the Odesa UNESCO City of Literature and being implemented with funds raised by Reykjavík Bókmenntaborg UNESCO as part of the readings initiated by Milano City of Literature “Not Just Words” (Reading for Odessa) on February 24, 2024.
