Poem: #WhereIsTheInterpreter, by Lisa Kelly

Sign up to be part of the legal case here. Sign up for the petition for an interpreter on daily government briefings here  (on 38 degrees) and here (on Parliament UK).

#WhereIsTheInterpreter – by Lisa Kelly

It is always an access issue, always a case of make do,

make do with subtitles, make do with delay,

catch up because you don’t matter and are relatively few.

 

The Prime Minister briefs on the pandemic every day,

what we should do because ‘we are all in this together’

but 87,000 people cannot hear what he has to say.

 

In Scotland and Wales, they provide an interpreter

for vital information about how the virus is spreading,

what is expected of us, what problems might occur

 

if we don’t understand exactly where we’re heading,

if we don’t stand united, follow government guidelines.

If your first language is sign, if you have no hearing

 

then hear this: the Deaf community should not be side-lined.

Give equal access to information for all. We, the undersigned.

*

Sign up to be part of the legal case here. Sign up for the petition for an interpreter on daily government briefings here  (on 38 degrees) and here (on Parliament UK).

Lisa Kelly’s first collection, A Map Towards Fluency, was published by Carcanet last year. Poems have appeared in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press) and Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. Her pamphlets are Philip Levine’s Good Ear (Stonewood Press) and Bloodhound (Hearing Eye). She is Chair of Magma Poetry and runs poetry workshops at the Torriano Meeting House, Kentish Town. Lisa has single-sided deafness and is also half Danish.