In the New Uzbekistan, the Voice of a New Generation

Why should I not praise you before the wide world, calling you “my Uzbek,” When my era has granted me the chance to know my true self, my Uzbek.

— E. Vohidov

As I write these lines, two drops of pearl-like tears roll down beneath my glasses. Recently, I traveled to the Tian Shan mountains. Those three days felt like three years. On my way back, the very moment I set foot on my beloved Homeland, my chest filled with the scent of serenity. I felt the taste of peace and happiness. As I got into the car, these lines echoed in my heart:

My Homeland, you are my pride,

The soil where traces of my childhood remain.

You see me off when I leave and wait until I return,

I feel your love like a mother’s embrace.

I have seen many lands, I have seen the Tian Shan,

Yet I understood your true worth even more, my dear motherland.

I do not need Paris and its Eiffel Tower,

A handful of your soil is honor and glory for me!

With these thoughts, I continued my journey. At one moment, I noticed a girl sitting nearby, quietly reading a book. 
Again, I sank into reflection:

In which country does a president give a car simply because someone reads a book?

In which country does the state reward you by funding six months of education if you learn a foreign language for just two months?

In which country is an entire Olympic town built freely, solely for young people?

The answer to all of these questions is one: Uzbekistan.

Indeed, today Uzbekistan is a country of youth. For the first time in history, practical solutions are being implemented to support the dreams and initiatives of the younger generation — solutions that nurture their pursuit of knowledge, creativity, sports, and a rightful place on the international stage. As a result, every young person today has the opportunity to make their voice heard, to present their ideas, national values, and identity to the world.

Yes, today’s generation is educated, healthy, and confidently proving itself on the global stage. Young Uzbeks are studying at the world’s most prestigious universities — Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, and many others. And if we speak of sports, you have surely seen our flag proudly waving atop the world’s greatest arenas at least once. Our young innovators, meanwhile, present their inventions at renowned platforms such as the International Innovation Expo and UN & UNESCO Youth Forums, consistently being in the spotlight of international investors.

Let us speak through simple facts from 2024–2025:

For the first time in history, UNESCO’s General Conference was held outside Paris — and that city was Samarkand. Uzbekistan became the first country to make this happen. Moreover, Uzbekistan became a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

International education standards were introduced. Transparency and openness were promoted in politics. For the first time in history, our female karate and judo athletes stood atop the podiums, bringing chains of medals back to the Homeland. For ten consecutive years, our boxers have once again proven that they are among the world’s strongest. In 2025, our footballers carried the Uzbek nation onto the FIFA stage. At just 20 years old, Sindarov once again proved to the world in 2025 that he is the “King of Chess.”

When we analyze these developments, it becomes clear that in recent years Uzbekistan has secured a strong position internationally as an open, reform-oriented country that ties its future to its youth. Remarkable victories in sports, achievements in science and innovation, young men and women studying at leading global universities, and active participation on international platforms are tangible results of this transformation. State-led youth policy, investments in education and sports, and cooperation with influential international organizations such as the UN and UNESCO have elevated Uzbekistan’s global standing.

Particularly, initiatives that bring youth rights and opportunities to the international level clearly demonstrate the country’s strategic vision.

Shokhida Nazirova was born on March 22, 2004, in Andijan. 

She serves as a representative of Uzbekistan for nearly ten international organizations. She is fluent in German, Russian, Turkish, Italian and Kyrgyz. She is a young leader who has made nearly ten social projects in the region.

Chronicle of a Rescued World 

The planet’s lungs, once torn, 

now breathe with the rhythm of an ancient oak, 

its branches, veins laden with new sap, 

reaching toward a sky that has forgotten the toxic haze. 

We were blind sculptors, 

carving cracks in the earth’s skin, 

extracting gold from its bones, 

without hearing the lament that rose from the roots. 

The ocean, a shattered mirror of plastic, 

reflected our indifference, 

its creatures, stars drowned in the abyss. 

But one day, 

the echo of a dying hummingbird 

pierced the glass of our deafness. 

We saw the moss wither on the edge of the stones, 

the sun, a pale coin amidst the smoke. 

We were reborn, not from maternal wombs, 

but from urgency, from transparent guilt. 

Each tree planted, a silver thread on a damaged loom, 

each river cleaned, the pupil of an ancient god regaining its sight. 

Now, the bees, tiny goldsmiths of the air, 

dance over fields that don’t smell of chemical lament. 

The mountains, wise guardians of memory, 

rise up, green scars that tell of our redemption. 

Our hands, once weapons of felling, 

are now architects of nests, 

tilling the earth with the respect of those who sow a future. 

Conscience, a beacon lit in the fog of oblivion, 

guides our steps toward the embrace of the wild. 

This is the time of the second chance, 

where the jaguar’s roar is not a legend, 

and the whisper of the wind brings the promise of skies without ash. 

We have learned that life is not a loan, 

but a symphony we must protect, 

each note, each being, 

indispensable. 

We have been the castaways who found their shore, 

not building new ships, 

but repairing the only one we had: 

this blue, vibrant, and fragile home, that breathes with us.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.

children die and we buy phones
children work in mines in africa
to mine cobalt for mobile phones.
do you have a nice mobile phone?
i do and will update it soon.
children work in mines in africa
and are forced to slave for pittance.
as a kid did you have to work in a mine?
i never had to either.
children die while mining cobalt
for nice new mobile phones:
children die and we buy phones.
Buy. Phones.
Children. Die.
(repeat).

a petrol and planet hypocrisy
fill it up again and again
places to go and roads to drive on.
full tank in and exhaust spews out
into the air it goes and blows.
and yes we go to fossil fuel rallies
for we care about our environment.
we limit plastic use and love the trees
and always recycle our rubbish.
but again and again we fill up our car
as we have all those places to go.
so is care for the planet and fill it up
a petrol and planet hypocrisy?
you tell me as i know nothing
(but i do know what i’m feeling).

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen had a play run in Spain for 4 years. 

Archaic Torso of Apollo

After Rilke

 

He has no head. He has no eyes

to pin us with his godhead. But his torso

is itself a gaze in which there grows

from inside, like a covered lamp, a fire.

 

Without that rising surge, divinity

would not ravish you, nor would a lip

trace the gentle curve of thigh and hip

to the shadowed center of fertility.

 

Without it, the stone would seem a broken thing,

chipped, cracked, dead, a stone,

and would not glisten like a wolf’s dark mane,

 

and would not from its remnants blaze and singe

you like a god. Of all its parts, there is not one

that does not see you. Your life must change.

The world feels so loud sometimes,

So alive that you forget you’re running out of time.

Not today. Not tomorrow. 

But someday, grief shows up one morning and just moves in. 

And love?

Love stands by the curtains.

Not handing out comfort to everybody.

Just watching. Waiting.

Seeing what you actually need. 

This isn’t a biography I’m trying to list its  dates.

This is just a heart that kept going after it got broken.

A soul that figured out the ground is cold,

But still decided to sit in the chair anyway,

Behind the curtains. 

This isn’t really about the chairs or the curtains.

It’s about how still you learn to be,

To sit in your grief without letting it crush you.

Like no matter what cracks underneath,

That chair holds.

Except, death… 

We call it the uninvited guest,

A weight that settles in the hollow of the chest.

Death is the one crack that swallows everything.

No sounds.

Just a hole that takes the sorrow and the love both at once. 

But here’s what I’ve learned:

Death took the person,

The creative mind,

The talented hands.

But it didn’t take what they left behind. 

Grief teaches you something If you let it.

Not right away. It beats you up first.

But eventually,

It shows you how to pay attention.

How to hold things tighter without squeezing too hard.

How to sit in the quiet and still find something worth making. 

Maybe we don’t get over it.

Maybe we just learn to build around it.

We take the loss and turn it into something.

A poem, a meal, a small kindness,

Or a minute of patience we didn’t have before. 

And when the poem forgets it’s a poem

And becomes a room,

It becomes a room where loss finally takes off its coat.

Where love doesn’t just visit anymore,

It sits down to stay.

Where grief and gladness walk in together,

Like they always do, and for once,

They don’t have a single thing left to ask. 

Except…

What does the poem say about us?

It says we are the ones who need it.

We’re the ones who take these little black marks,

These little arranged scratches on a page,

And we make them bleed.

We make them bleed with our own blood.

We make them sing with our own throats—

The ones that get tight.

The ones that crack.

We make them hold everything we cannot hold by ourselves.

And then… somehow… we can.

Because we are the creatures who build bridges out of breath.

We are the ones who go looking for our own faces in the ink.

We let the poem teach us death.

Not by lecturing.

Not by explaining.

But by showing us how to live. 

And it’s not about filling the hole.

It’s about learning to live around it.

Knowing it’s there.

And still… still creating.

And maybe, that’s enough.

Amina Kasim Muhammad is a Nigerian writer and spoken word poet with a deep passion for storytelling. She finds herself drawn to the way stories can transport readers to different worlds and how ideas can be shaped and shared through the power of writing. Valuing her pen and book as essential tools of expression, she is also an advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Amina is an active member of the Minna Literary Society (MLS) and Open Arts Kaduna, where she engages with fellow creatives and contributes to the literary community. Her work has been published; one of her poems appeared in Synchronized Chaos Magazine.  You can connect with her on Instagram: @meena_kasim. 

Way of Origami

I fold

fold paper in

fold into myself

fold my hand

a Royal Flush

folded from me

when I fold into myself

I create these things

and imbue meaning

into them 

through

my writing 

and you believe this

because you finished

reading me

Property of Doctor Yes

A white boat made of wood,

wood refined into something they call paper.

It sits on a wooden river

colored a rich caramel

with a white background.

It has no sail

so isn’t permitted movement

Why is it there?

Because it allowed me to write this

A Game of Sudoku

They speak wrong numbers

a syntax line,

an error column,

a diagnostic fault of reality

warring over my way of thought

moving through my straw head

of full entry and brain matter,

whispers of shape with no end.

Like the quiet, you want nothing

because something is missing.

I Am Content

I eat when hungry,

I drink when thirsty,

I sleep when tired.

What more could I want?

That’s how I know 

I’m trapped.

Mount Olympus

And then boom

a drywall with holes from butterflies

and a leaf with ostrich eggs

the skeleton lay

an ant caught in his joint

looking at Life

her heavenly skin

a green away from him

he explodes into ash

is reborn

a rose bush

with no

thorns

Gionni Valentin is currently is his UD2 year at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, NJ.

Holy Grail

Each afternoon, between Gomer Pyle and Big Ten Theater, the pantry door opened to a small altar and a humble gray amphora, the cookie jar Grail of my Oreo eucharist. My arm disappeared into the dark, wide mouth womb eagerly to the elbow. My small fingers fished for six. There was a compulsive comfort in the number, and with blackened teeth I’d sit before the TV transfixed in ritual, gulping a glass of Nestle’s Quick.

After Mom stopped cooking, cleaning and comforting, after Dad lost the house, the business and confidence, after thrown curses, clothes and coffee, a hysterectomy, psych wards, divorce, therapy and thirty years, my mother sent the forgotten vessel on some well-intentioned birthday errand. She’d glued the broken lid to contain the cargo of my childhood pain. For a while it was on exhibition, an empty antique sitting upon a shelf. I brushed my teeth obsessively after each occasional cookie.

Today I’ll reap and rejoice in a quiet little catharsis. With hammer and shovel, I break and bury the jar in my backyard. Today, I can see my wounds as a sliver slices a finger. What I once thought brought solace, now appears brittle and sharp. Blood fills my hand and drips wet, warm and sticky into the earth. This new grave is moist, fertile and sweet.

Saint Francis

I was canonized, or nearly so, in Ogunquit, Maine last summer on vacation. At dawn, along a granite edge, a collision of continent and ocean, gazing at the Atlantic’s implacable crush upon the shore, I sat in a deck chair cupping a croissant and five-dollar latte (no vow of poverty quite yet).

However presumptuous, a passing fantasy, I thought of myself as Saint Francis. Ridiculous. (On my pilgrimage, a tourist charter to Assisi, I only recall the charming Giotto frescos there; no birds congregated in the basilica; however, I wasn’t paying attention.)

I wasn’t blessed with a martyr’s beatific vision, no celestial seraphim. I was more attuned to inconsequential sparrows flitting about my feet in unassuming feathers, in browns, grays, the drab shades of friars’ habits. Unlike the brash gulls, sparrows, humble, timid and admittedly and prudently so, were terrified of the sea.

My Fioretti: I’d like to believe they gathered for my sermon, my wisdom, my eloquence. Surely, I would allay all fears; so, I mimicked their small chirps, but they cocked heads skeptically.

Graciously indifferent, they skittered, too busy with pecking and scratching, a miracle they listened at all.

Weapons

When Vietnam took all the boys and splayed them on the evening news, a boy, like most boys emulating most men, but especially in uniform, I was smitten with TV shows on World War Two, diluted versions without the gore, without the complications of falling red dominoes.

After failing at catch, Dad tried again in a trifecta to win my affection. Dad fashioned a wooden machine gun (my deadly 30 cal.) to mow down Nazis in Normandy. Keenly, I provided the “rat-a-tat-tat.” However, screams and morphine were not included.

Dad built a cannon from a board and a pipe, artillery on wheels pulled behind my tricycle, a barrage devasting for the Hun. However, my little howitzer was mothballed, rusting when I began riding a real bike. Undeterred, Dad bought more lumber.

Dad spent hours (I was not around) on the envy of all the other boys. An ace over France, I sat in the cockpit of my Spitfire shooting Messerschmitts from the sky. However, trouble was, it lacked altitude. I never left the driveway, never wore my parachute.

Dad was on yet another sales call and I was home alone when I took a hammer to my grounded fighter. After the crash, it never flew again.

Before I Die

An artillery shell stirs my flesh with mud and soldiers divide my limbs among dogs. Just before I die, I’ll taste the softness of my beloved’s lips and a ripe, sweet, summer peach, not bitter plastic tubes or pain-killing pills. I’ll listen to the house finch and the wren but not the television getting in a final commercial, nor one last bit of Mozart’s brilliance.

My body glides in perfect, choreographed grace over steering wheel, dash, through windshield glass, my blood painting car hood and pavement in sweeping, expressionistic gestures. Just before I die, I’ll gaze upon a pale blue sky filled with the warm light of morning. I’ll not look up to a clean, white ceiling and harsh fluorescents flickering; I’ll inhale the humid breath of Spring or the pungent decay of October; I’ll not smell disinfectant on cold stainless steel.

I’ve lost my speech; my right side hangs as limp as a nursing home prick, but I manage half a smile when I’m told my heart has worn too thin. Just before I die, I must hold something in my hands: my grandchild’s face or my son’s graying head; I’ll dance one last time upon the forest floor amidst Mayapples and sassafras; my feet will never reach the clean tile beneath an iron bed.