The possibilities that poetry presents are endless. We often explore the territory where edges extend and boundaries blur. Doing this brought deaf poetry and some of the exciting performers who use American Sign Language (ASL) to express their poetry into focus.
“Transients” by Douglas Ridloff | You can see more from Douglas Ridloff HERE
ASL is its own language, a complex form of manual communication with its own grammar and vocabulary. It can express rhyme, rhythm, meter, repetition, and alliteration using facial expression and body language. Hands, head, and limbs create linguistic patterns that add emphasis, meaning, and structure to ASL poetry. Without sound, it engages us emotionally and suggests a different set of sensibilities that can come intoplay in crafting poetry.
Throughout the world, each country has its own version of sign language. People who use American Sign Language don’t understand English Sign Language and vice versa. In fact, American Sign Language is closest to the sign language used in Brazil!
Watch this REELpoetry2023 Deaf Panel Discussion to hear from ASL poets!
Crom Saunders
Crom Saunders is Associate Professor in the ASL Department at Columbia College Chicago, where he teaches a number of ASL Linguistics, Deaf Studies and Interpreting courses. He holds an MA degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento (2002). He earned his BA in English from California State University, Northridge (1996).
Douglas Ridloff
Douglas Ridloff is a renowned Deaf poet and visual storyteller, creating original works in American Sign Language (ASL) which have earned him national and international acclaim. He has performed at prestigious venues, including the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and SITE Santa Fe. His work has been featured by major outlets like NBC News, Circa, HBO, Vice, CNN’s Great Big Story, and at TEDxVienna and TEDxUniGeneva.
Peter Cook
Peter Cook is the Senior Lecturer in the Program in Linguistics at Princeton University. He is an internationally reputed Deaf performing artist whose works incorporates American Sign Language, pantomime, storytelling, acting, and movement. He has traveled extensively around the country and abroad with Flying Words Project to promote ASL Literature with Kenny Lerner since 1986. Peter has appeared in Live from
Off Center’s “Words on Mouth” (PBS) and “United States of Poetry” (PBS) produced by
Emmy
Sabina England
Sabina England is a Deaf filmmaker, playwright, and sign language poet who has won multiple awards. She has performed at New York International Fringe Festival and her plays have been produced in London, UK. Her non-fiction piece, Amor Indocumentado has been published in Untold: Defining Tales of the Uprooted (2021). She collaborated with Missouri Botanical Gardens in the summer of 2022 and explore sounds of plants through
Heba Toulan
Heba Toulan, born in Cairo, hails from Washington, D.C. area. Her credits include The Laramie Project, Olivia for Twelfth Night, Hecate for Macbeth at the Woodlands Arts in the Park and Shakespeare in the Shade, DeafBroadway's Rocky Horror Picture Show, COMPANY, and Les Miserables, She recently starred in SENSES, Compromised Experiment, and The Window Washer.
Willy Conley
Willy Conley’s latest book is The World of White Water – Poems (Kelsay Books). His other books are: Listening Through the Bone – Collected Poems, Visual-Gestural Communication: A Workbook in Nonverbal Expression and Reception, The Deaf Heart – a Novel, and Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays. Conley, born profoundly deaf, is a retired professor and former chairperson of theatre arts at Gallaudet University sign language, poetry and dance.
Meridith Gray
Meridith Gray is an artist, interpreter and educator. One of four siblings, she is the second child with hearing loss after her brother, succeeded by a deaf nephew. She began painting at 15 and earned a bachelor of arts in drawing and painting in 2012. Her work explores the poetic allegory that permeates our world. She is interested in depicting relationships in the cosmos, nature and anatomy, as well as using symbolism.
