Department of English Studies, Professor Miwa Ota joins the Poem of Solidarity between the Afghanistan Poet

Miwa Ota, Professor of Department of English Studies, has presented her poem “Poetry Profession for Poem of Solidarity between the world and the Afghanistan Poets” to the poem collection, No Jail Can Confine Your Poem - A Poetic Protest Against Censorship and Suppression of Art in Afghanistan (Published by BAAMDAAD/Design Egg Inc.).

The Afghanistan poets, Somaia Ramish, who exiled herself to Netherland called for participation in poetic protests toward world poets, against the Afghanistan Taliban regime forbidding the lyric writing in the country. This is how the poem collection started. https://afghan.caravan.net/2023/02/14/appeal_by_baamdaad/

Nozomu Shibata is a poet living in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. He knew about this effort from Juichi Noguchi, the editor of “Web Afghan in Japan” (a website that distribute Afghan related news) and then forwarded this poet protests through SNS in Japan. It ended up receiving many poems from all over the world. He was responsible in editing this collection which stores 36 Japanese poems, and 21 poems from Nepal, Mauritius, Netherland, France, America, Nigeria, Italy, Iran, Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Slovenia, Denmark, Belgium, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Canada, and Turkey, all translated in Japanese. Please see Nozomu Shibata’s blog (article written on 2023.8.9.) for more details.

The Japanese edition of No Jail Can Confine Your Poem - A Poetic Protest Against Censorship and Suppression of Art in Afghanistan (Published by BAAMDAAD/Design Egg Inc.) was web published by Amazon Japan on August 15th, the day when Taliban regime took control of the Afghan government 2 years ago.

Following media have introduced about the collection; The Hokkaido Shimbun Press, Asahikawa Cable Television, NAGASAKISHIMBUNSHA, The Independent (Persian), BBC News (Persian).