Join us for a reading celebrating Kim Stafford’s new book, Proclamation for Peace! We are especially hoping to have speakers of as many different languages as possible to read the poem at the event, which has been translated into fifty different languages in the book.

Languages include: Arabic, Armenian, Ashaninka, Bislama, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Classical, Danish, Dutch, Dzongkha, English, Esperanto, French, Gaeilge, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Kurdish, Latin, Mandarin, Nepali, Newar, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Quechua, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Upper Austrian, Vietnamese, Yoruba, Yucatec, Maya & Zapotec.

• About Proclamation for Peace

  A miraculous book envisioned by Allison deFreese at the Oregon Society of Translators & Interpreters, and edited by Allison deFreese and Kim Stafford.

  Thanks to Allison’s international network, Kim’s peace poem in English is translated into fifty languages, together with notes on translators and their languages, and QR access to dozens of voiced readings. This book sends a peace proclamation around the world so it may become a new poem in Arabic and Hebrew, Russian and Ukrainian, Tibetan and Mandarin, Tamil, Vietnamese, Polish, Yoruba, Yucatec Maya, and a host of other languages. With its fifty voices speaking gentle words, this book is for the children of the world. The cover image by Michael Nye shows a child holding a poem by Mahmoud Darwish:

  I long for my mother’s bread

  And my mother’s coffee

  And my mother’s touch

  And my childhood grows up

  One day following days full of patience

  And I love my life

  Because if I die

  My mother’s tears will shame me

• About Kim Stafford

  Kim Stafford is Emeritus Professor at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He writes, teaches, and travels to raise the human spirit through poetry. In 1986, he founded the Northwest Writing Institute, and he has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. His most recent book is the poetry collection As the Sky Begins to Change (Red Hen Press, 2024). He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate for a two-year term.