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.
Manami — a 4th-grade student
When I’m Really Bored
When I’m suuuper bored, I play with my friends.
We do the games they like.
If they like moving around, we play dodgeball or tag.
If they’re more of an indoor type, then card games…
but I don’t really play indoors that much.
And then we become even better friends.
Time keeps slipping away,
and before I know it, it’s already evening.
I wonder what’s for dinner.
Thinking about that happily, I head home. With my friends.
Coming back from the park and places like that.
Even riding the bus home together sounds fun.
Commentary by Rie Muranaka (the coordinator of the project):
This poem was written by Ma, a fourth grader. She loves to move her body and usually finds it difficult to stay indoors. Yet in this poem, when she becomes “suuuper bored,” she shifts from her usual rhythm and adjusts herself to her friends instead.
While creating the poem, she corrected me with a quick, clear voice when I misheard the subject of one line. “No—my friends are the subject!” she insisted.
Her emphasis showed how strongly she wanted the poem to place her friends at the center. That intention shines quietly through the lines. As she described how time slips away—“before I know it, it’s already evening”—she nodded with satisfaction and said, “Yes, that’s exactly how it feels.”
It was as if she were enjoying the moment of finding words that match her own sense of time. On the way home, she goes not by herself but “with my friends.” That small phrase carries a gentle warmth, reminding us that the care home is not only a place she returns to, but also a place where daily companionship grows. And when she added that even riding the bus home together “sounds fun,” she swayed her body slightly, almost like humming. Her poem shows how her own way of expressing things is beginning to take shape—naturally, quietly, and with the support of the friends she names so fondly.
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.
