Go See: A celebration of Deaf poetry at Ledbury Poetry Festival on Saturday 8th July

This is a sponsored post. Ledbury Poetry Festival takes place from Friday 30 June – Sunday 9 July 2017 and features two BSL poetry events. Book tickets through the box office (01531 636 232) or online by clicking here for Air Poems in the Key of Voice and here for Stairs & Whispers: D/deaf  and Disabled Poets Write Back. Both events are BSL interpreted. More information below.

Saturday 8 July

72. Air Poems in the Key of Voice  (BSL Interpreted)
    A work of translation by Kyra Pollitt featuring the British Sign Language poetry of Paul Scott and the vocal gestures of Victoria Punch, with supporting film-poetry by Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron.
    12 noon–1pm | Market Theatre | £9 (£4.50 registered disabled, free tickets for carers)

For Britain’s native sign language community, poetry is a linguistic, visual, kinesthetic and visceral experience. Form in sign language poetry is created through play with language, space, image and movement.

For this work performed live, Kyra Pollitt analyzed the image-rhyming in Paul Scott’s poems to create a basic score onto which Victoria Punch mapped a series of vocal gestures inspired by the Estill method.

For those who don’t sign, access to the content of the poems is offered through film-poetry by Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron simultaneously superimposed onto Paul and Victoria’s live performance. The piece will offer hearing audiences something of the rich, immersive, spine-tingling experience conjured by sign language poetry. BSL-interpreted.

Saturday 8 July

75. Stairs & Whispers: D/deaf  and Disabled Poets Write Back (BSL Interpreted)
    3.30pm–5pm | Community Hall | £9 (£4.50 registered disabled, free tickets for carers)

Stairs & Whispers is a major UK anthology of poetry and essays from D/deaf and disabled writers, published by Nine Arches Press. Join writers, disability activists and co-editors of this groundbreaking anthology – Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka and Daniel Sluman – for an afternoon of readings, performances, films, and discussion around disability poetics, D/ deaf culture, and poetry as text, performance, recording and translation.

At this accessible venue in a BSL-interpreted set, the Stairs and Whispers editors will present poems from the book. They will be joined by several other writers and performers from the anthology, live or via captioned film-poems in BSL and English.

Poets include Rachael Boast, Markie Burnhope, Andra Simons, Gary Austin Quinn, Nuala Watt, Bea Webster and Donna Williams.

In a political climate that constantly threatens to marginalise disabled and D/deaf people, Ledbury Poetry Festival hosts this afternoon of poetry and discussion that explores, empowers and represents the realities of disabled and D/deaf poets in their own words.

Sandra Alland’s work includes Blissful Times and Naturally Speaking and Khairani Barokka’s works include Indigenous Species and Rope. Daniel Sluman has two books: Absence has a weight of its own and The Terrible.

This is a sponsored post. Ledbury Poetry Festival takes place from Friday 30 June – Sunday 9 July 2017 and features two BSL poetry events. Book tickets through the box office (01531 636 232) or online by clicking here for Air Poems in the Key of Voice and here for Stairs & Whispers: D/deaf  and Disabled Poets Write Back. Both events are BSL interpreted. More information below.