A Proclamation for Peace
This project joins poetry, translation, music, and film to produce a seven-minute video for sharing internationally to advance cultural exchange and peace. In preparation for the film, the project draws on a poem published in the book A Proclamation for Peace Translated for the World (Little Infinities, 2024), together with translations into fifty languages, and the composition of a vocal and instrumental score featuring piano, cello, oud, guitar, tabla, and vocals in seven languages.
The film adaptation of the poem is set to the music composed and produced by Theresa Koon. Theresa’s composition was recorded with a dozen vocalists and musicians in January, 2026 with a generous Echo Fund grant from MusicOregon. The recording features vocals in English, Punjabi, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, Arabic and German. Ron Bourke will be directing the filming, with shooting scheduled for Spring, 2026. We are currently working on raising needed funding to cover the costs of the film’s production.
A Proclamation for Peace
by Kim Stafford
Whereas the world is a house on fire;
Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
a single bird on a wire
left by migration behind.
Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
and peace an abstraction
while war is real;
Whereas words are all I have;
Whereas my life is short;
Whereas I am afraid;
Whereas I am free — despite all
fire and anger and fear;
Be it therefore resolved a song
shall be my calling — a song
not yet made shall be vocation
and peaceful words the work
of my remaining days.
Musicians include: Ben Tissell, Theresa Koon, Hannah Hillebrand, Sharon Fendrich, Talia Valdez, Shivani Joshi, Bhaskar Garguly, Rita Marquez, Inna Kovtun, Lamiae Naki and Nat Hulskamp. Engineered by Tommy Hazerian at Portland’s Dead Aunt Thelma Recording Studio,
Our creative team includes:
Kim Stafford, founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, teaches and travels to raise the human spirit. He taught writing at Lewis & Clark College for forty years before retiring and becoming Professor Emeritus in 2020. Kim is the author of 20 books of poetry and prose and in 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate.
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Theresa Koon composes music primarily for voice, emerging from an international vocal performance career including several years at the Thüringerlandestheater in Germany. Operas, song cycles, and choral music make up the center of her work, generally inspired by explorations into social issues or current events.
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Ron Bourke is an award winning filmmaker known for emotionally affecting insights into the immigrant experience. Previous documentaries have focused on the trauma experienced by children in the Syrian civil war and the challenges faced by young girls and families who’ve escaped the war in Somalia to forge a new life in the US. Both films have been broadcast nationally in the US on PBS and screened in numerous international film festivals..
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