 I was hearing until about the age of three, and then I developed spinal meningitis. And I try to look back and see if I can remember any sounds, and I can't really, but they may be in there somewhere in the back of my mind. But anyway, when I was little, I had just gotten home from the hospital. I remember my mom came up to me, and I see that she was talking, but I thought, oh, mom, you're so silly. Where's your voice? Did it break? And then my dad started, and I went, wow, he doesn't have any voice. His voice is broken, too. And then my dog, I saw that it was barking, and there wasn't any sound. And I turned on the TV, and there wasn't any sound. And I realized I'm the one who's, quote, broken. And, you know, communication became a huge frustration. I don't remember exactly all the details, but, you know, I had to, like, learn everything all over again. And it was a very difficult time. I went to the School for the Deaf in New Jersey, the MKSD. And at that time, they were an oral program. There was no sign language. You know, so up until about first, second, third grade. And my parents weren't real happy with that, so they transferred me to the Clark School in Massachusetts. And again, a very strong oral program. And I didn't know any sign language whatsoever, but I was really, really interested in theater. You know, because growing up, I had to communicate with gestures. I remember seeing Charlie Chaplin, you know, the little hobo tramp guy. And I would laugh and laugh. My family would laugh, too. I thought, well, hearing and deaf people enjoy the same things. And he became my hero. He didn't talk. He didn't sign anything. I thought he was just great, and that had a huge impact on me. So I didn't know any sign language as I got along gesturing. I didn't know any deaf people until, let's see, about the last year at Clark School. They were hosting a basketball tournament, which all these deaf schools came into town. All the other students had gone home leaving just me. I was working ticket sales. So that's why they let me stay. So I sat there at the table, and they would say something, and I would go, oh, the cost is a dollar, but I can't sign. And they would look at me, and I'd go, one dollar? It's like a deaf person talking to a person who's deaf who signs. And, you know, they were going, oh, the guy can only read lips. And they seemed to have such an easy time of it. And, you know, I had to always struggle with my friends, you know, asking to repeat, like, what'd you say? What'd you say? I was 15 years old. I remember this clearly. It was at night. I was at bed practicing the alphabet by myself. Maybe A to F or something like that. I didn't even know the entire alphabet at that time. After Clark School, I went up there to eighth grade and went to a high school in Pennsylvania, a hearing school. Only deaf child there. There was no interpreter. It was a boarding school, private school, so very strong arts program. And that's where I really got my initial interest in poetry, which it was written poetry, not, you know, the type of expressive poetry that I do. A lot of my friends were the foreign students because they were English-inhibited as well, so we had to gesture back and forth. I think it was an NAD. They had their 100th conference in Ohio and I saw all these deaf people signing and I couldn't believe it. And I admit there were a lot of pretty girls, so that was sort of a motivation. So the NAD conference, I went there because I had a friend of mine from Clark School and he had a deaf sister, an older deaf sister who had been involved in NAD. She said, you know, you should go. I thought, okay, you know, there's going to be a lot of deaf people there. Oh, that'd be great because at high school I was all on my own, but to be there, I thought, great. And what a difference. They're 24 hours day in and day out with just deaf people and then going back to a high school senior. You know, I couldn't live that way. I just couldn't. So I started looking into different opportunities, Gallaudet or NTID. My teachers recommended that I go to RIT because of their strong photography program. So I thought, yes, and I visited Gallaudet. I ended up picking NTID and it was a completely new world for me. I felt that I was BAD, born again deaf. So, I mean, the first day, and I'll remember this was the 80s, I had my little skinny neck tie and my pants and, you know, my hairdo. Kind of punk at that time. Immediately I started meeting some deaf people going, you deaf are hearing. And I said, well, I'm deaf. They went, oh, you don't look deaf. It's because I wasn't a capital D deaf at that point. It had written all over me that I was a little D deaf. And they could see it. I mean, it was obvious in everything about me, how I behaved. I mean, they caught on right away. Really, it was a memorable moment for me. And I remember I got involved in language. I mean, totally involved in language. You know, people might have made fun of me because of my sign language. Well, that's fine. I can take the teasing. But I felt honored to be looked at and accepted. The one thing that was there was theater. In the fall, I was involved in a play called The Tempest. And I played the character Caliban, who's half animal, half man. They picked me because I couldn't sign. They said, well, you're a lousy signer. You'll be perfect. Don't learn any. This day, I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult. I still don't know. What a great experience. Patrick Graybill was there. Get to work with him and see his process. And it was incredible. Plus all these other deaf students and actors who had an enormous impact on me. It was incredible. You know, the funny thing is, at that time, I thought I was pretty skilled. And of course I wasn't. You know, before I was thinking, like, oh, yeah, but, you know, I was young. Kind of young and foolish and arrogant. Yeah, when you're talking about the physicality and the communication, that comes from theater. You know, in high school, I was in a play Once Upon a Mattress. You know, Once Upon a Mattress, The Princess and the Peace Story. I was the king. And the king can't talk. So everybody, you know, ignores the king. And then they have the jester there and he talks for the king. So I had lines. And the director said, that's perfect. Do gestures for that. And that's where I first started experimenting with the idea of taking words and making them physical. Making it kinetic, that kinetic energy, the movement. So there was a song that I had to teach my son the prince about the facts of life. You know, the birds and the bees and all this, but you don't tell him straight out. And he's going, Dad, what are you talking about? I would act it out. I'd be like the little bird in the flower collecting the pollen. And then there'd be a baby and gesturing out the whole thing. And he's saying, I don't understand. Maybe he was my first interpreter because it was age of 17. I was still gesturing the whole thing away for the whole show gesturing. And I thought, that's communication. A teacher would ask me, how do I do this? And I go, well, like this. And they go, I never thought of that. So I thought, well, you know, I've got something special inside. So I really took it from there. And then I saw Bernard Bragg. This was back to the NAD. The first time I saw Bernard Bragg was there. He was giving a workshop on visual vernacular, VV. So the workshop was with Bernard Bragg. And I remember this clearly. I didn't know any sign language still. But even though I was meeting all these deaf people and I was sitting in the workshop. Bernard did the hunter story. And I went, look at this. He's staying all in one place. But there's different characters happening all in this one space. And I understood it so clearly. It was like watching a movie. I was like, wow. I understand everything. It was so exciting. And the minute it was finished, I started thinking I want to come up with something. And I thought, I got a story about a man who finds a mummy. So I was using his technique of going back and forth between the characters and all that. And I practiced it and I came up to him. And I said, Mr. Bragg, look at this. And I did my little thing and he goes, oh yeah, good job. And he walks away. And that was it. But I remember that. I mean, that technique is still something I use to this day. That's the whole foundation. Without that, things would be completely different for me. That's right. I was oral growing up. But I love to read. That's what I had was books. I mean, that's something I got from Clark School. Something anyway. Yeah, Clark. But I loved comic books, you know, because of the pictures. You would see these little frames and panels. Some were big, some were small. And it was, you know, the exciting part would get big. And then you'd have the words and the pictures, the whole graphic thing all at once. You know, a graphic language all right there. That really influenced a lot. Batman was my favorite. I loved Batman. You know, very simple, but also very emotional. It could really connect with him. So I did a lot of reading. And I could make this into gestures, you know. Like instead of having the cartoon balloon where they talk, I could do the gestures because they had the language there. You know, they would say like, oh, no. So I was able to connect all the language with the visual part. I remember at Clark, I read a book. I don't remember the exact title of Mice and Men or Men and Mice or whatever of Mice and Men. Yeah, that's what it is. And I remember reading that and going, wow, that's really something. It had a huge, huge impact on me. I was fascinated, hooked by that. From then on, I wanted to read as much as I could. You know, poems are very short. Back then I had no patience. You know, I like to get right to the gist of things, you know. For me, poetry is like you gather up all this stuff. You know, like maybe about a rose and then you plant the seed. Or you take it and you distill it right down to its essence. That's what poetry is for me. So I started writing for myself and started to experiment. This was in high school. I took a poetry class and I started writing and borrowing different types of styles. E.E. Cummings, playing with words. In college, I got much more, you know, deeply involved. That's where it started. To be honest, when I sat in class and the teacher would be explaining stuff, I'd miss an awful lot of it. And sometimes I'd just come up with my own technique or I'd ask another student, let me see yours or let me see yours. And I remember in this one class, we were supposed to write something and then get up and speak it. You know, wrote this thing, but then how do I speak it? So I gave it to the teacher and or have another student read it for me. Sometimes they would, you know, kind of like ask me questions and stuff. And I just kind of felt like, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't getting a lot of feedback on it. I didn't able to see images. I didn't see any rhythm in the lines or anything. I mean, people would give me a thumbs up and that would be about it. You know, they go, yep, thumbs up. Well, that wasn't satisfying to me. So I started playing with the words again and they said, do you have a seven count or an eight count or so? Okay. And so I'd struggle with this and try to figure it out. And I enjoyed the challenge. And then I'd have this product and, you know, they'd say it's nice. But then when I went to college, everything changed. Nope. I never took a poetry course at RIT or an NTID at all. You know, I kept my writings in college. My first interest was about learning sign language. I mean, that was so fascinating to me and getting involved in theater and acting. Plus I was involved in a relationship. You know, another deaf person. It was my first time with deaf culture being exposed to that, banging on the table and getting people's attention. You know, the cultural norms for deaf people and learning those things and then navigating my way through that. I never did anything like look down on it or go, oh, why are you doing it that way? To me, it was a great learning experience. And, you know, even though I was oral and learning sign language, I could see things. I remember, you know, how people looked at me and stuff and I don't blame them. You know, I was just pretty clueless. Now I look back and I go, oh, I understand the culture so much better now. My parents accepted it right away. I would sign at home and they go, oh, well, you're learning signs. Or they'd say, oh, there's a new sign. And all of this, my mom says, wow, your writing has improved so much. Yeah, absolutely. My writing got way better. You know, because I was aware of the language and I started learning about the grammar and going, oh, so this is how English works. And that helped me to be able to clarify, you know, how word endings or grammar or syntax or all those things like before. You know, hit me with stuff. Now I really understood it. And that really helped my writing a great deal. People were shocked by that. Proof is there and this is what helped, you know, the power was there all along. People often ask that question or often I ask myself, you know, what's preset? Where's the springboard? You know, what's the jumping off place? I think Allen Ginsberg was the jumping off place. But what was the ladder to get up to that springboard? During the first two years of college, I was involved with a lot of theater, very heavily involved. You know, that laid the groundwork for, you know, we'd go to parties and we'd say, why don't we have a performance party? Dennis Bizinski and Warren Miller and Mike Holman. We'd all get together. It wasn't just me creating something. We'd have like a heavy metal comic book because it was very visual. And they'd have the story there. Some guy writing on a bird or something like that and looking for food or, you know, on a bus. But then the bus goes underwater or underground or some just these crazy stories. And so we'd have a party down in the cellar. And we would, you know, be doing all this stuff. It was great fun and all of a sudden it started getting real popular and more and more people were coming in. We had to work on how we were going to do these translations and coming up with new ideas and quote rehearsing this stuff for the audience because things were getting really popular. And then we had a meeting. Let me see, let me go back. No, yeah, it was Jim. We had this one meeting, one of the last parties. You know, there were just silly shows at that time. It wasn't anything real serious happening. It was just for fun. And he came up to me and he said, this is really good stuff. This is great poetry. And I was like, excuse me, but what the f- I just kind of looked at him. I went, nah, this guy's drunk. I mean, so I went on, I'm talking to my friends, but he kept coming up, you know, and I'd be walking along on, oh, what do they call it over at RIT, the quarter mile. Is that still there? Yeah, I'd be walking along. And all of a sudden he'd be right there and I couldn't get past him. And I'd be like, ah! I felt like trapped in his web or something. So he'd go, you know, there's this, there's that. And he asked me all these questions and I started to look at things in a different way. And I went, you know, this guy isn't drunk. So I started paying attention to him and listening to him and he said, you know, you've got to come and see this great poet. His name is Alan Ginsberg. And I remember the name from high school. We talked about him in class a little bit. And I said, he's going to be here? And he said, yeah. Robert Panera is going to be hosting him. The translation course or something. And Patrick Graybill will be there. I thought the two of them meeting, this would be great. I have to do this. I changed my plans. You know, whatever I was doing that day, I did a 360. So I went to this and I sat there and I watched. And I remember there were tables over here and tables over here. And over at this table, they had a little bowl of incense burning. He had a little stick that he was tapping it with. And at first he was kind of tapping it in rhythm. And I thought, that's something he's supposed to understand. Because I don't know, this was 20 years ago. I mean, they had videotaped to prove. He was just sat there tapping this thing. I thought, is that kind of music? Is that the first poem? What? Oh, I don't know. Was it just making it up or what? But yeah, he was using that as rhythm. And I was fascinated. I went, in my mind, that's not language. Then I thought twice, maybe poetry doesn't have to be language. You know, maybe you just have the word. The word becomes poetry. Or is it the word that's part of the thing that becomes poetry? And you just place it in different ways. The most basic foundation, simple thing. He just started with tapping. And that's how he brought up Howell and the other hydrogen jukebox. And he asked people, what do you think that means? I remember Patrick Graybill came up with something, a sign for hydrogen jukebox. Where he said, you have this music machine. You put in a coin and your mind blows. And I was like, oh my god. I was blown away by that. I just went, wow. And then the aftershock, he said, now did you see that? There were no words written there. It was the concept. It was a clear picture. It's the rhythm, the concept. The language doesn't matter if the picture is clear. And now for me, that's what poetry is. And I was like, oh my god, I spent all this time writing stuff and trying to figure out how to translate it into sign language. And it wasn't working. I didn't understand that my hand becomes the paper. My hands become the poetic meter. The English is written on my hands. I've been doing it completely wrong. So I ended up after that letting go of it. That the tapping plus Patrick Graybill's modeling, all this stuff. I let go of all my old ways. And I went, yes, this is right. And then when we got together for those parties and we looked at the magazine and how I like picked up on that and became that, that's what Patrick did. He became it. You know, the principle was exactly the same. He was making that visual movie. And I just went, wow, it did. It blew me away. If you see that video, you can see me in the audience acting like this. I remember that feeling so clearly. It blew me away. I'll never forget that day. I wonder if everyone in the room felt that moment, including the interpreter. Kip Webster was there. Kip was really good, very skilled. But I guess the point was the performance, you know, was just beautiful, being in a visual way. You know, having to let go, just completely let go, yeah. After that meeting, Jim came up to me right away. You know, Jim came up to me, you know. He's a very strategic person, you know. He goes step by step. And I knew that he had some kind of master plan. He has one. So he may deny it, but he had one. He came up to me and he said, so what'd you think? And I was like, wow, it was amazing. He said, well, you know, here's the book of his work. And it's called Bird Brain. And so this was my first opportunity to try and let go and see what I could do with it. Oh, and it was so much fun. I remember playing with things like, oh, what was it? Bird Brain, the old bird walking through the dark. And then the bird sees something and he takes a bite out of it. I mean, and it says it in the, you know, the words, but I had the freedom to start playing with it. And I remember the movie techniques, the hand shapes. Well, I hadn't done the hand shapes yet. This was all just physical, the body, you know, still VV that visual vernacular was still a poem. Pure visual vernacular. When I did that first thing at NAD, I was 15. And then I went to this poetry workshop and I took the techniques that I had learned from them and tried to apply them. Oh, yeah, I did one, one early work. I don't know if there's a video of it, but it was very simple. It was about this beating and dirty air and smelling something in the darkness and filthy pollution and coughing and then seeing this green glowing thing. And all of a sudden it became alive and wrapped around me and pulsated and then came out into this great beast. This dragon that flew away and had a new life. So that was the very first poem that I did. This was right after the Ginsburg workshop. And Jim saw that and he said, you got to show that to the hearing community. And I was like, I don't know. He said, no, nope, you got to do that. And he gave me the bird brain book and I would build off of that. But I kept thinking, I kept going back to Ginsburg. Give me some others. I mean, isn't there any others? And he goes, there's this whole group. I didn't even know about this, these beat poets. I found this one Caruso that I just loved. He was very direct and macho. I was young and poet was young. With the older guys, I couldn't really relate to. But the young ones, I could. Well, I was young. I wanted that kind of like tough kind of thing and show that to the Rochesterians. This is the kind of stuff that I want to do and do all these different translations and work a little bit off of that and develop my own work. And then the seller. And we decided to set up a bird brain society at NTID. They had this bar that was very popular. It was a Wednesday nights, I think, where people would go down there. All these deaf people would do like this open mic kind of thing. We did poetry. You know, I remember we did all kinds of different acts. You know, we had the Heavy Metal Act. It was private. And we took it from there and opened it up to the public. And it was great. But it was short-lived. You know, got ruined by dynasty. That TV program killed it. There was the first time there was captions on TV. So everybody that was coming to the seller left. It was dead. I mean, screw them. We did advertise the poetry some, yes. We didn't call it poetry. It was performance art. You know, we were saying, no, no, no, this is performance art. I mean, people would say poetry and storytelling, but you know, they were still kind of, we don't know about that. With the techniques, we know that there were some, you know, the hand shapes, ABC stories. We knew about that. That's not our focus. You know, and we were just playing and enjoying ourselves. We weren't thinking about labeling it. The Bird Brain Society. We had flyers made up. I still have a poster at home. I saved all that stuff. I saved everything. Well, yeah, we have pictures, not of the group, but of the advertisements. Who are the people involved in all that? Writers and books where they had hearing people doing their thing too. We didn't have any video-staping in the seller. You know, we didn't know. We didn't know. No pictures. So that was the beginning of the process. And Jim again came up to me and said, you got to go to the community, the hearing community. He called Writers and Books. I performed with Emmett the first time. He was a hearing person, you know, hearing poet. He was from a Genesee Valley society. There's nobody signing. Who's going to be able to voice my signing? And that's where I met Kenny. I mean, Kenny would have been in the seller. You know, he sat there. We had a few drinks together and I go, who's that strange guy with the beard over there? He was one with a beard at that time. Everybody was the 80s. Nobody had a beard in the 80s except for him. So he kind of stood out. So we never really talked or anything. Just remember him being there and kind of observing. So we kind of like see each other, you know, like two little dogs sniffing each other out kind of thing. And then Jim said, no, I've got a friend there. And so he'll get in touch with you. I didn't catch his name or anything. And I remember clearly it was time to go out and there's the guy with the beard. You're that guy? And I went, oh yeah. Well, of course, he'd be one of Jim's friends. And Jim knows best. So I met Kenny. I said, have you ever been an interpreter? And no. You know, I knew all the interpreters who were involved and I'd never seen him before, but I invited him into the house and we sat down and we talked and I showed him some of the early poems that Dragon coming out or several of them. Somehow we started going back and forth and immediately a bond was made. It was history. That was history, damn it. So I remember seeing Kenny sitting on the floor holding a piece of paper and talking into a mic. I said, yeah, that's the way we started doing that. You know, we would type it up. You know, we'd talk it back and forth first and then I would type it up. You know, a lot of the things that we had were already done. You know, like the dinosaur thing and some of the other stuff that has already been written and I would just give it to him and he would be able to follow what I had written. Now I don't know if he did it word for word. And to be honest, we never even talked about that. You know, because I was like, I'm the deaf student. You're the interpreter. No, later that was yesterday, sure. You know, I didn't really know about interpreters back then because I still didn't understand, you know, what they were all about. You know, I didn't know what an interpreter was supposed to do. I hadn't experienced it before. I never grew up with one. You know, no one ever taught me. You know, when I was in a play, they would have someone speak for me, you know, but there wasn't any sort of personal connection or anything. So, you know, it didn't really bother me or anything. I just remember he started talking about making sound effects, playing around with sounds. I told him, yeah, yeah, yeah, make the sounds. You know, we're both contributing. It's a collaboration. But then later, I know he really, really got into it compared to what he's doing now. Well, it's like I remember one poem, Baseball in Central America. Yeah, in the bottom of the ninth inning of Romero. It was, I did that turnaround of Romero being shot and Kenny had a bell and he kept hitting it in a rhythmic style and just kept hitting the bell, following this rhythm. And he started to do sort of these different sounds with it and then he started using a paper bag and he was breathing into it to make the sound of like a heartbeat and then when it pops, everybody starts running out of the church, you know, because the Archbishop had been shot. He did sound into the microphone to emphasize that and it was like for the hearing people to not only get the language but to really watch the signs and have the sounds. It was less words and more sound cues and I think it was a pretty good idea, great idea. I really enjoyed the whole concept. You know, in the beginning, you know, the first time we gave a presentation, people didn't know what to say or how to react. They were just kind of like, what's that? I was up on stage saying, yeah, me too. I don't know what I'm doing. So they're looking at me. I'm looking at them. We're kind of waving at each other. I said thank you and leave. It was the same like with the hearing people going, I don't know, there it is. At first, I didn't know anything about deaf culture. I was young. I was still learning. The hearing arts community was very strong and well-established and, you know, I didn't really understand that the deaf community had that. So I didn't have a bond with it yet. Often, I would just say things that didn't, you know, weren't culturally appropriate or didn't match the culture. It's like, it's like before, remember I was talking about that panel where we were talking about a tape and I said, you know, this was several years ago when I was a kid. I said, you know, this was several years ago when I was a young student and I said, who's going to watch a performance? You know, who's going to be interested in my work? I said that. I didn't mean that. You know, if I had a time machine and current me could, you know, travel back in time to younger me, I'd smack myself in the head. You know, that's what I would do and then get back to the future. So anyway, you know, there were all kinds of different levels at that time. You know, we had poets like Clayton Valley and Ella Lentz and they were going line by line with things. And to be honest, at that first conference, the ASL Lit Conference, let me go back. There was Dr. Panera. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I remember. Marim has a tattoo. Anyway, I had taken a class with Patrick Graybill and I can't remember exactly what it was called. It was translation or whatever. I took a lot of classes and they kind of like run together for me. But it was, you know, about hand shapes and being very specific. And Panera was a lot more about the words, the English, like spoon river anthology. You know, he would ask, how would we sign that? And I would take a look at the text and be able to expand on it. But it was still English into an ASL translation. It wasn't starting out from sign language. It didn't stray very far from English. You would still have the point. I mean, sometimes you would go off and then you'd come back and off and come back. I mean, I love to watch how he would sign and, you know, his poems about on his deafness and all those types of things. I hadn't met Debbie yet. Debbie wasn't there for the first couple of years. But I started out, you know, like movies. I loved movies. I was a lousy signer. Kind of like Maul's, the first time you see Jabberwocky. He's a lousy signer, but he's very creative. So that movie technique, the visual vernacular, I wanted to be the camera and have long shots, close-ups, using the body to become, you know, the poetic space. And have the body become the lines. You had a far shot, something tall, something close. All those movie cinematic techniques, you know, would be involved. And then when I met Debbie, she had come back, I guess, to finish her degree. So when she came back, I found out we had a lot in common. Let me think, what was that first poem? It was Before Rape Chocolate. Before that, before that, before that. I just remember watching her and the way she would express herself. And I thought, wow, we're very similar. You know, she uses a lot of body movement and, you know, the vocabulary was the movement compared to, you know, the other people who were working with just hand shapes and rhythms. She was very different. You know, so it was like there were two different groups and we became really good friends right away. We started to work with each other and we started to get involved, the three of us, all working together. We started living together, the three of us. So at the house, every night, sharing and collaborating and creating was awesome. And, you know, we were doing a lot of the same work with, you know, body language and different techniques and all this kind of stuff. I thought that was a great technique and, you know, how to be able to incorporate all these visual things. And then I took a dance class or, you know, I think that was before the conference, though. Now, that was before the conference. Jim had gotten some money to establish the very first ASL lit conference. And this was the first one. People thought that the second one was the first. That was in 87. The first. With Ella, Patrick, Clayton, Debbie and myself. That was the first one. A lot of people didn't even know about that. It was 98 or something. But people thought that was the first. They said, no, ours was the first, theirs was the second. You know, it was the forgotten conference. But luckily, I have everything documented. You know, a lot of people didn't know who the people were. And, you know, Jim said, you know, we're very excited. We're welcoming people. We're getting people excited about it. I'll never forget that. I remember it was on a Thursday evening. We were getting together for a reception. And we were talking and looking at each other. And I didn't know Ella or Valley. I mean, they had been involved for years and years. I had no idea. I just thought the whole thing had just started. But, you know, I was ignorant. I was young and dumb. I didn't know who anybody was. I remember Patrick and his storytelling and his ASL. You know, he was how ASL was finally recognized as a language. And I thought, I don't see the struggle. I didn't know the history. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know my roots. I was just a fish, you know, out of water. Later is when I found. And then a lot of hearing people got really excited. And they wanted to learn about much more about it. And I thought, well, this is just part of my everyday life. That's the language. You know, my experience was watching interpreters with hearing poets. First time I saw this was in Rochester. I mean, Rochester was a very unique time. I mean, it was a very special time in history. You know, a lot of deaf people who are very interested and motivated in this. And a lot of the hearing interpreters, too, they wanted to know how could we communicate what it is that you're expressing. And the interpreters were getting exposed to what deaf people liked and what they didn't like and being able to match the culture more, not just doing, you know, a formal kind of sign language. Part of it came from that Ginsburg workshop because they were able to let go. There's a lot of things that you couldn't just say in English and doing in sign language without letting go. And I remember a lot of the interpreters like Susan Chapel or you were there, Miriam. This is Miriam sitting over here. Oh, Bob Barrett. Every once in a while, Jim would do something. Cindy Barrett. There was a whole group of people, I remember. I mean, it depended on the poet. Todd Beers, a very strong visual person was great. I enjoyed him so much. Paul Dixon, he was like a wild man. I mean, he was so clear. I couldn't connect with him exactly, but the interpreters worked really, really hard. You know, compared to what it's happening now, it's just, it's different. I mean, people aren't as involved as they were. I mean, before we were working and involved every single day. It was, it was a great time. Wonderful. Okay, so here's a really good example. I was talking with Dixon and there's the quote that he even wrote about it too. It's talking about spoken language and the root of language. Lingua means tongue and literature means written. So tongue writing, but it doesn't match with sign language. And the problem is historically people have been focused on, you know, the words and the sounds. Like if I spell the word tree, I write down the word tree. It doesn't mean anything to me. There's nothing there, T-R-E-E. But when I sign it, I see it. It's there, physically there. I can see a tree or like a boat. You can see it or the water. You can see it. It's clear by spell out water or lake or whatever. And I write it on a piece of paper. I don't see anything. And that's why historically, you know, modern poets have been looking at this going, this is what deaf people can do. They've been struggling with imagery in the language and letting the language become the picture. But we've already got it. It's built into the language. And a lot of people thought, well, ASL isn't real literature because it has nothing to do with speaking or the written word. We have to redefine literature. We have to look at it instead of being on the ears, on the eyes. So literature doesn't mean just whether or not you can speak it or write it. It has to become much more global physically. That's something that needs to change. People should know about that. Let me take something and let's see. From the poem Neruda. This is a great example. Very simple. I want to do with you what the spring does to the cherry tree. Okay. Very simple line. But you don't see a picture I want. What's that sign? What's that got to do, like a handout begging or and then spring, maybe a little bit of a picture and then cherry tree. But if I change that into a physical conceptualization like this, the picture is there. Period. End of story. I didn't know Dorothy Miles, but wow, she... I remember her early work from a videotape. Eye language or... No, language for the eye was the name of the poem. I saw that. It was wonderful. And people told me that she, you know, would talk and sign at the same time. But the way that she played with the morphology, the hand shapes, people standing or falling, she was letting go of ball bouncing. And she would change to something different. You know, that wasn't the normal way of doing things. She was just taking out little bits and pieces and still following the traditional lines, but they weren't completely English. You know, it was line by line. Then you would have a hand shape or a facial expression or body movement. But it was still following what the ear said. It was a strong influence, but the line was also being changed. She was playing with the language, and it was fascinating. And I think that that probably influenced Valley and Ella and Patrick, where people would look at that and say, wow, she was great at signing and speaking at the same time. But if you ignore what she was saying, if you look at the hands, it's really rich. You know, and she is definitely playing with the language. You know, that was definitely a manipulation of the art. It's almost like she's working with Clay and following it but saying, shh, shh, I'm going to move this around and make it mine. I know this is your way. This is my way. And you know, I really applaud that. I mean, it was so inspiring because you'd see like Malz and his jabber walkie. He tells the story way back in the early days. And then you'd see with Joe at NTD where he's taking out the sword and they're fighting the monster. And you go, wow! Before that, it was much more just signing. What a very different approach. So it was like one built on the other. And to this day, Jabber walkie still goes in two different directions. One is more the formal sign language, you know, the written language, and the other is where they're letting go. It's just not derived from the written word, but it's like the story of what's going on next. In my third eye that they did at NTD, I think that's the first time I saw a group poem. That, I think, was incredible. Plus, they were all coming up with all sort of creative things themselves, building a script together, not working from a written script. But it was like a turn of culture. Very interesting. And that, you know, playing with the language was, wow! And you still see a lot of the, what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? Where does it go? And then you see there's dot. They still have the old school, and they're kind of bringing it back together. So now, even though they had diverged for a little while, they're now starting to converge. And where that leads us in the future, who knows? You really should contact Chris Kranz. He runs a deaf program in Virginia and gives lectures about how printed literature influenced hearing people and how documenting literature and videotapes and movies has influenced deaf people. Once printing presses were established, the printed word became more available to the common people. But in terms of movies and videos and everything, you know, people making these videos, people have to practice and practice and practice to make them, you know, clear. And that sort of made signs frozen and more formulaic. But now with vlogs and the ability of everybody having cameras or doing things on their computers, it's changed. Language changed, and that's going to influence things. Now movies have this pervasive influence. They always will, but there's, you know, sort of informally creeping into the signs. So my prediction is, yeah, it's going to continue. Yeah, definitely pagers, texting, all of those things have an influence. You know, the language is going to become more standardized because videos are cheap and cameras are cheap and DVDs are cheap. Plus there's a lot of contact language. There's the internet, there's the deaf community becoming more sophisticated and their appreciation of literature and English. They're expecting more. They're demanding more complexity. You know, before things were just simple, and that was fine. You know, someone would say, watch me, and they showed this person walking and falling or becoming a frog and swimming, and everyone would say, oh my God, wasn't that amazing? Did you see what he did with his sign? It was so creative. Now it's like, yeah, so. It's got to become more complex. I think when you talk about the language itself, you know, Americans use a lot more finger spelling than over in Europe. They're much more classified oriented. They use classifiers a lot more there. They're very experienced with it, so that's what they do. They tend to play more with classifiers because that's more in their vernacular. But here with people like Valley looking at verb poems and using classifiers, I remember when I interviewed him, I guess it was in 95. I sat with him, and he was talking about how there are a lot of different images and pictures and poetry, and he said, you know, you really have to be careful about saying there are pictures and poetry. It's classifiers. And I said, classifiers, I mean pictures in the sign language. And he said, no. What you're talking about is a classifier. That's not a picture. And he showed me when we were talking about trees or the sign for tree. This is actually part of a classifier. The sign of walking with both hands. A B shape is walking, and that's a classifier also. He said, that's a big part of the language, and those act as verbs. I hadn't even realized the linguistics of that. I was not really related to the language. I thought it was just something in me that I was just using. But then when I watched this video, I realized at the time that you made your DVD, that the sampler, it's so funny to watch myself from a long time ago. I was so clueless about so many different things. You know, I've evolved so much and I've grown in my understanding over the years. It's fascinating. Yeah, it's an evolution. Yeah, it's like going backwards. I often... How do I explain this? Ella's just amazing her ability to produce this clear imagery. Back at the time when I was younger, I didn't have that sense of deafhood yet. Her themes tend to be really deaf, and a lot of that I had no experience with, you know, growing up. So it didn't resonate with me. So I had no connection with that experience. You know, I was working with my hands and learning the language, but as I became older, I appreciated her work even more than I did before. I watch it now and I go, I enjoy it much more than before. A lot more than back when I first saw it. I thought it was good back then, but now I'm totally taken by it and I get it. Before I sort of took it all in, but I needed to experience life more. I needed to get more from the little D to the big D, you know, for her work to really make sense to me. The way she uses handshake, rhythmic movement, I mean, it's really carefully constructed. All the techniques she uses to incorporate in her work, the picture, everything. It's so rich. You know, the way she uses circles and how things are all interconnected and how they move and flow in this circular motion. Even when she shows a forest or trees, they're moving and then she stops to make sure the point is there, as if the camera frame is freezing. It gives people a moment to soak it in and then she goes on to the next image. It's amazing. Really thought about the political element of poetry. You know, I know that deaf rights and deaf equity and parody are all within the language. I hadn't really gotten into the political aspect of things because I wasn't part of that sort of radical group or feeling that I needed to be dissident. But when you get into the poetry, I mean, some of it is really very, very clear. There are a lot of very clear symbols that Ella uses, for example. You know, but a lot are metaphoric and you have to look at the symbols and behind what the symbols mean. Like Ella using a tree for a deaf child and seeing it grow. In her other poem, The Door, you know, and to a hearing mother. I didn't get them at all and now I think they're incredibly profound because I have experience with that and I've seen it now. I appreciate them so much. Helen Valley both were very, very strong, you know, which is great. We need that. Back then I was sort of like, I don't know. I did not think those issues were so important and now I feel that they are incredibly important and precious to us. And, you know, we have to have issues because that's reality. I mean, you can't show it every moment, but what's really important to me is that I think it assumes all these sorts of political ideations are the languages, the language that we use, the ideas and deaf identity issues are all within the language. I think compared to like 20 years ago, that I'm more into the transformation, handshake, movement, playing with the language itself. Writing has all of these constructs and I feel that ASL has an exact equality to English writing. So I feel things have changed. Yeah, yeah, that is right. There's a loss of culture and used to have that strong deaf identity. It hasn't been there. It's got to be somewhere. Do you have it? Oh yeah, no, I remember clearly how I came up with that because it was very simple. I remember I was talking to a friend and somebody said, oh, poetry. Well, there's gesture and then there's signed English and then there are all kinds of languages. And I'm like, yeah, but you could try ASL poetry and they said, no, I can't do poetry with that, with ASL and I was like, oh, no. I wanted to show something different. I wanted to show a different way of being and a different way of showing language and I thought, oh, going from the past to the future, that's what I wanted to do, going from the past to the future. So one night I started typing something up on this old typewriter and I was able to come up with this one thing in one night, overnight. It wasn't taking weeks or anything. That was it. One night of total creativity. Oh, no, wait, I have to go back for a minute. Oh, wait a minute. There was this movie, a Japanese movie. I remember the title. Oh, what was that? It was the movie and they had a story and a story. No, it wasn't Rashomon. Okay, but the way it opened, and this was a true story, there was a Japanese poet who decided to take over the whole country and he had his own private militia. It was in 1960 or somewhere around there. I don't remember the poet's name. Mishima? Mishama? Mishama? And oh my God, it was just incredible. So the movie opens and it's all in black and white. There's this top-secret meeting with all of these suits and they're making all these decisions and then there's this other story in the movie and all of a sudden it's in color. It has a name of the story come up and things start to happen within this very sweet story and then it goes back to black and white with these militia guys taking over the country and then it goes back to the other sweet sort of story and color and it goes back and forth and somebody is taken over and they realize they're going to fail. He commits Harry Carey. So there's the story and the story and I held on to that when my friend was saying I'm not really doing poetry and I thought I'm going to use that technique of going back and forth story to story and start with this boy sort of blowing a horn as a call to arms and a story will happen and go along for a while and then the first part were these people digging and they found this box and they look up to the boy who was calling these spirits to come out and to tell their part of the stories. So I used that technique of going back and forth person to person put it all together in one night. Yeah, same here. I don't know why I used a horn. I guess it's because it's a big call, you know, like it's a strong archetype. You know, it's a universal. I mean, anybody with a horn who's doing it means it must be an emergency. You know, people have to pay attention and listen or as deaf people might have ignored it, they couldn't hear it, I guess. You know, it's like using a piano in the school for the deaf or something. I failed. You're right. I used the wrong symbol in my palm. I never realized it all these years. Well, see, I was young. That's the proof right there. You know, I guess I'm not any smarter than I am now. You know, I don't know. Maybe the boy stands up on a hill and he takes a flashing light or something instead. Everybody, or do you know a text page or something, some sort of flashing light. Yeah, smoke signals. You know, up on a hill, oh, that's a good one. I should use that. Oh, yeah, good question. Well, I took a class with him and he showed me this haiku poem. Yeah, it was a whole story that I looked at. It was about a frog, you know, from Japan. So we worked on this, becoming the frog and having it jump and land in the water. And I remember we talked about it being a small puddle instead of a big lake or whatever. That's when I remember he showed this frog jumping into something smaller. And when I watched his work, I was so amazed by it. And then at the conference, I could see a whole lot of his work. I had only seen a few things before and I was really taken with the space shuttle poem. And when the space shuttle blew up, that his heart actually had a reaction. And then when the space shuttle fell, the tear fell down his face at the same time. Valley incorporates some of those techniques too, like in the old summer house poem, the fire goes up, the house comes down, and then emotions are up and down. And other poems he has, these like very circular movements where things go up, things go down. He has all kinds of movements up and down that correspond to linguistic ideas. And Patrick, he has this sort of broad take on things. I remember this one poem where he's singing, oh my man, I thought it was so interesting. He did a musical thing in sign. Plus he's deaf, but the music somehow was something that he incorporated. I thought that was really interesting. I remember that really clearly he's how measured and calm he is with his delivery. Soft, gentle hands, the sign very smooth and flowing. His hands shapes are really, really fine. You know, if I were to show how a painter would paint him, it would be like not all over the place in a phonetic way. Ella would be like circular lines on a canvas, but Patrick, more the sweet flowing thing. Debbie would be more phonetic, and then stopping for a second, then everybody gets it, and then phonetic again, and then slowly changing shapes and being more like a rainbow, but then being more in and out of the lines. And Valley, if you were to show him as a painter, it would be this very flowing graceful way of showing hands and then presenting it to the audience and making it feel like a piece of appeal to the audience who's becoming part of his work. You know, for me, I just throw the paint at the audience and it would go all over them. Or maybe I could take a bucket of paint and dump it on my head. Bernard Bragg? Well, his poems would be more measured and very rhythmic, like music in a sense. Up and down, up and down, that kind of thing. Well, like I was saying before, Debbie and Kenny and I live together, so it means we were exposing each other every day to do this, you know, playing with ideas, and often, well, sometimes I'd be cooking or we would just stop what we were doing and start playing and performing together. You know, very physical all the time. And Kenny and Debbie might do some work together, and I wouldn't be part of that mix, I wouldn't be satisfied with the way Debbie was doing something. And he would come to me and I would give an idea and then I'd become part of it or the opposite would happen. He and I weren't connecting in terms of an idea, but he and Debbie would. So it was sort of this three-way sort of intersection. I mean, it was great. Tended to be the three of us, but sometimes it would be Debbie and Kenny and sometimes it would be me and Kenny and sometimes me and Debbie. I remember one poem, painting rainbow or something. It was like a ladder or something, throwing paint on the sky. I remember something like that. I remember it was very abstract. We came up with this idea and with Kenny it became more imagery, became more of a picture and there was also a political element. And then, of course, especially with missing children, it was very political. And of course then there was rape chocolate and then, you know, the cath poem, that word poem that Debbie did really incorporated a lot of her personal views into her poetry. I think I was a bit more general than that. It wasn't quite so personal. I would look at these issues, but she was always well, something that was more personal to her that she needed to express. Her texture was different than mine. Her timing was different than mine. You know, slow motion. I love her slow motion, especially in missing children in South Africa. The man is carrying the coffin of his child. And when he's shot, and his expression is the bullets hit him. That was slow motion. His whole body contorts. Then there's this other poem that she and I did together called Hamburg. It's a simple story. It's about a lousy relationship. They have a fight. They're driving in the car. He has this bad blow up, and the guy throws a hamburger at his girlfriend, and he punches the window in the windshield and breaks it. Really simple. Not much to it. But it's like a movie. If you're sitting in an editing room, you say, okay, I'll take that part, and then I'll copy and paste over here, and then I'll have to repeat this over and over again. And when I watched the DVD, and I saw that again, it was so cool because in the beginning we were opposite movements. And then we were together. Then we copy each other. Then we go back and forth. It's like a micro to macro to micro again. And it's all in the editing. It's like the art of the editing for the whole thing. That was a fascinating technique. Well, first she came up with her own story, the back and forth, and the back and forth. That was all her. And then, you know, how it would join. And then we would play with that, and we would go back and forth, and then we realized we would shatter the windshield together. And then it became this duet. At first I said, yes, wow, we can work together. That's great. I think we just did two or three poems together over time. It was wonderful. I became really into realizing that sign language poetry didn't have to just be one. It could be two. It could be three. It could be a group poem. I really got into that idea later. And we had to deal with the idea bridge of, and that's how that came about. Trying to come up with ideas for a show. You know, you have one hour. You have one person who's going to do the whole thing. And it doesn't matter how good you are, or how wonderful you are. I mean, it's really hard to keep an audience engaged for an hour when you have the same sort of level. You got to build momentum. You have to take them up and down and up and down and keep things funny and then sad and then mysterious or whatever. And you have to give rest to the eyes by changing the pace of things. So with bridge of, we had one person come up, then two, then all of us, and then one, was involved with that. And Debbie was in on it too. And then they would take turns. It was more like when they asked me, you know, oh sure, sure, I'll join. I really did not have the lay of the land in the beginning. I wasn't sure if I was good enough to be in it. You know, it was an attempt to bring the deaf and hearing worlds together in the sense of parity, quality, and mutual respect. I don't think it really worked out the way to tell you the truth. I've realized that either the hearing world or the deaf world, one or the other has to make concessions to join the others. But to have this exact equality won't work because the situation requires that somebody give a little bit more than somebody else. If something is obviously deaf sensitive or if two hearing people are talking and can sign but they don't, a deaf person comes up, if they decide to speak in front of a deaf person, then they're making a decision for exclusion. They're being rude. I mean, that's a cultural norm, right? We need to show respect and hearing people might require parity in a different way. Bridge of envisioned this kind of parity that we were able to propagate but it really didn't work out that way. We will be exactly the same. We will come up with our own norms and cultural values and create a third world but it just didn't work that way. You know, you can't ignore the values of either group at the expense of creating this thing that doesn't exist but I do feel that Bridge of was a great exercise and experiment because it made us look at ourselves. It made us confront certain things within us. You know, some of the ways I could match with Debbie better and in some ways I could match better with Kenny. We all went our separate ways from this group and we all became more of who we are. Jim moved on, Debbie moved on, Kenny and I moved on. Everybody sort of moved on in their own way and this time was sort of a conversation, an impetus for all of us to become more of the individuals we were to become. I was a student during the first poetry conference. Yes, right, still a student. Yep, I was still a student. That's right. I was taking art classes. I was doing posters, advertising, creating poetry, doing all of it all at once at the same time. Kind of like my life today. I mean, I'm a teacher. I teach classes full time. I travel on the weekends. I'm a father. You know, where's the time? It's something that I do. It hasn't changed. You know, at that time, let me jump ahead a little bit. Rochester was a real hotbed of activity and we were able to get some grant money. People were starting to recognize this deaf poetry stuff was really cool and at the time it was called deaf poetry. It wasn't called ASL poetry yet. So there were articles in the newspapers. One stream Rochester Press actually had stuff about us and things were really happening. At about that time, I moved to Chicago when I got here, I thought, wow, let's set up the scene here. So I started advertising. There was a bar that agreed to let us use their stage. I got some ads around. Nobody came. That's when it really hit me. Wow. This is not something endemic to the whole U.S. It was something specific to Rochester. No place else. No other place in the U.S. except Rochester had this. That's what was happening. It was there and I didn't know it was really unique. Oh, of course. I was very frustrated when I got to Chicago. I mean, my art was gone. I was missing all of my work. You know, I was working this job and I didn't want to do that. It was like I had to start all over again. I started teaching poetry and that's where I felt like I was becoming myself again. I would work during the week and I'd be able to show my work on the weekend and it felt more like Rochester. Trying to get people to come and watch everything. Then I started traveling around a little bit. I'd go to places and I'd sort of touch and show things and then leave and hopefully people would pick it up. I worked in Queens at the Fanwood School for three or four years on an ongoing basis. I'd start with these young kids, you know, and every year I would teach them more and more and more sophistication as the years went by and they were doing really well. So I brought them, I think it was to the third conference or whatever it was and these kids did such great work. It was so proud of them. It was group homes. It was one-on-one. It was all kinds of variety things and NTD, I think, actually taped that show and someone in the audience asked a question and he said, you guys are so great. How did you learn this? How did you learn to be so clear? How did you learn these techniques? And one of the students, I think his name was Larry, this black kid said I learned from you and you and you. I learned from Valley. I learned from Ella. I learned from Patrick Graybill. I learned from Peter Cook. I learned from you. You were my teachers. I was so touching. I thought, that's what we need. So who performs? Who takes this work on? We need that. People need to do it. It needs to be in the world every day and we often we forget that. I remember Joe was running a small publishers conference and I think there weren't too many people there, you know. We performed and I think I was paid maybe $25 and said, oh great. I don't care, $25 great. That's a language slut. That's what I call myself, a language slut. Yes, I am a language slut and I am proud of it. Anyway, yeah, I remember we agreed to go perform for this small publishers conference and we performed Charlie about a dog during the Vietnam War a very strong poem that Kenny and I had collaborated on. We'd come up with a lot of stuff but this was a very strong one and plus it was like a learning tool for us. We were using new techniques that we had never used before. Sometimes, you know, you do a poem and then you do it again and again and it takes a while to understand it but then you kind of top out but this one, I still learn from every day with this poem. Anyway, we performed this poem to the audience and we were done. We met a lot of people and this one guy comes up to us. His name was Gregory Calacavez and he said, hello, my name's Gregory and I work for the New York Arts Council. I'm in the Lit division and I'd like to give you money. I said, sure lay it on me, I'll take it. He said, no, I'm serious I can get you grants. I want to give you money. If you write a grant, we'll give you the money for it. I said, well, we've never done this before. We don't have any experience. And he said, well, I'll help you and sure enough, he flies to Rochester sits down with us walks us through the whole process teaches us every little in and out and he said where we needed to come up with an organization name and it would be a non-profit or whatever and then we'll give you the money. So we wrote this thing. He flew out gave it to his committee and he said approve these guys right now. I want to give them money just like that. They gave us $10,000 and it was for deaf poetry in Rochester so we could bring other deaf poets in. We brought malls in we brought in Sergei Breyer and Johanna Bologet Oh, yeah, bless them. Sergei's gone but oh man, he was amazing an amazing person. I met him at the NTD summer school. It's great. I mean, the way I recognized him the way he took my attention was we were in this acting class and the teacher gave us a script and said I want you to show this Sergei came up to me and he didn't act. What he did was like poetry. He did like a poem and the teacher said no, no, no, I don't want that. I want something internal I want something else. I want the lines and I said screw that I mean this guy's got it he is doing it. He has what it is inside and I want that. So sure enough we brought him and Johanna to Rochester. He's one of the Deaf poets that a lot of people don't know much about. He was so beautiful the way he used his hands and his eyes I learned so much from how he used his eyes in the everyday language ASL. It depends very strongly on eyes for eye contact you know to get people's attention and to indicate where people are looking but the way he used his eye gaze to reference his hand he would do like a tree and he'd watch the tree and react to it. It was a fascinating. Plus he was very, very measured. No hurries. Clarity was of the utmost important giving the audience time to absorb what they saw and totally get it instead of being barraged with imagery sometimes I'm sort of like throwing things at the audience but he was so clear I mean you know he was so clear and simple and yet complex at the same time. Together Kenny, Sergei, Johanna and I worked together and developed a holocaust piece called Only Thirteen and we experimented with a lot of different techniques I mean we were just pushing the boundaries and the language beyond anything that had ever been pushed before. We'd push everyday and our goal was just to let go. Let go of the constructs of the language and have it become art. Have it become kinetic. You know don't worry about the function it was like this great experience to work with them. I mean so open we tried things with black lights we did things in circles we did all these different techniques we never thought of before I mean bless him the world has changed now he's gone it's a lesser place without him Oh there's another Deaf poet that a lot of people don't know about Joseph Castranovo he's amazing he knows French, Italian, Spanish and what he does is he fuses different elements of all those languages and puts them together out on his hands I think Dirksen has one videotape of his he committed suicide so he's gone very very tragic because his vision his view of the world it was it's so different he had such a different way of looking at things and the way he went about Deaf poetry was really hot issues what he did he was already there he was like way ahead of the game and waiting for everybody else to catch up it was some short poem something like a voice was stuck and it goes into the hand and becomes legs and then it becomes a spirit or something his transformations were incredible voice up in the trees stuck on the bark the tree goes down the person walks ascends up into the sky I can't remember it any more clearly than that but wow and now that's gone Valley's gone too you know, Dot Miles is gone a lot of people are gone but their work is still out there and Sergei too of course it's really important to document these things and to have this and as long as we have them documented then their spirit lives on now you know younger people need to somehow see this and have it inside of them they need to take those hearts and souls and carry it with them we brought Deaf poets in and we had the hearing community involved also it wasn't just the interpreting community you know traditionally if there was a Deaf event certain groups of people would show up you had Deaf people you had interpreter training students ASL students and then you'd have interpreters who are already working in the field the greater hearing community wouldn't know about it if there were other hearing people then it was family members but in Rochester that is not what was happening yeah of course Deaf community people showed up and there were interpreters and interpreting students and there were people who wanted to learn ASL but the hearing people who didn't know anything about Deaf people came also it was amazing Deaf people were going to hear hearing poets too maybe people didn't know about each other but they were going out of curiosity so these audiences became bigger and bigger and it became really popular we started getting more money from the grants that we wrote every year Kenny said what about younger people who want to try doing this poetry stuff but only have a few things you know I want to do this like it's how I was when I saw Bernard Bragg what is anyone doing for them so we thought why not do a rookie night so we set one up we wanted to get together and you know they could show us our work and we'd give them feedback and we'd get together and kind of rehearse things out until you know things were the way they wanted it and then you know some things were probably not the way I would have done it but you had to respect what they were doing their technique and so forth you know it was their work and some of it was really good I think we had three all together the first one was awesome the second one by that time they started doing more performance art I remember this last time there was a TV involved one of the guys he's making love to a television Jonathan Levitan you know or something like that I remember him he's making love to a TV I thought okay is that poetry poetry is I guess it could be with a TV but you know there was a lot more performance art plus media and then at the conference I remember they were playing with this big movie screen forget the guy's name big guy AJ AJ Clark AJ Cook yeah he would interact with the movie screen and go back and forth playing with it I mean you just see that kind of thing now Rosalie right yes she does that yeah Rosalie was the next person and hopefully you know they're going to encourage more of that kind of thing but everything was just right you know the whole opening show was great you know everybody would go back and forth and interaction with the audience it was awesome it was so hot yeah I remember he talked about a flower and a bee and he was using some of those cinematic techniques you know becoming the different things using that idea of personification you know close up long shots going back and forth plus he did you know he kind of let go of some of those cinematic techniques and would like do the line beautiful as honey and it would become something concrete with words and then all of a sudden he would have an image and then he would let go of the words and go back and forth and he'd do it by following the eye gaze you know he would like look at the thing and then move his eyes away you see how his mind was switching back and forth between logic verbal and imagery he kept working at it you know he keeps fighting it he's got his energy that's his art right yes and he loves music why did I come up with that one well at the time I was experimenting a lot and I was in the theater I was still a student but I really liked performing art a lot because my major was art and I liked the experimental nature of it so I had grown up in all these oral schools and I was still amazed because once I learned sign language everything seemed so much easier to me but I struggled so long with the oral method and I didn't feel like I got any skills or learned anything from it I was learning about deaf culture and understanding more and more about deafness and deaf people and I wanted to express that about how this manipulation of language and oppression and paternalism was keeping everybody down the issues of it the colonialism all the things that were oppressing deaf people and I thought why do I not talk it doesn't matter if I'm not clear people won't understand me why do I not want to say here I am I'm the product of an oralism method period this is what you get hello I am your oral success story how could I find anything that would prove it even more than that would oralism didn't work for me period and here's the outcome so I wrote this down and then I thought what I would do is force Kenny to sign it because he's not a native signer I thought you sign he said I don't want to I don't want to I'm the voice I said no no that's the point I'm lousy with my voice and you're a lousy signer so come on he said okay so we went on stage and did it and we played with that back and forth at the minute I was very nervous about the deaf audiences I know talking about oralism is sometimes taboo I mean it's a really hot issue I think it's something we need to confront head on especially through art because if somebody is angry why are they angry I want to show people that I understand this that this is something that I've been through I mean you can understand it if you've been through it I wanted to go to that place where finally I can show that that this is my world I can show what happened in my past and you'll get it that's a place of comfort and before every performance I'd explain to people you know Kenny is not voicing he's signing I'm voicing and my voice isn't very good I'll say my voice isn't very good and that's the point of it it's called I am ordered now to talk and I just talked and talked my way through it and I really enjoyed it it was like signing it was talking it was so much fun because I didn't want to talk it was more like I was playing I was just playing letting it come out through my voice you know all those years of being admonished for not saying anything the right way you know I had to think about where my hard palate is you know how do you make a bee you know how do you make a vowel where do you put your tongue and all this kind of crap the end of the science of it the math of it whatever it's so oppressive I just thought you know what the fuck I just want to enjoy it laughing crying letting it out shouting all the things you do it's beautiful I was in the corner just yelling or something just getting it out and it's right there and I didn't care what it sounded like I just talked about how Kenny was signing away in his you know awkward kind of Kenny signing way and the deaf audience saw this and they I remember Patrick Graybill was looking up and going but the hearing people really took it to heart and got so much more out of it and that really hit me that the hearing people were getting more out of it than the deaf people there's the irony I think it's the most political strong against oralism I think of and the way to make that case was by speaking right and it's ironic that you know they when they document this or when they video record it or when they study it who's going to use it is it going to be the signers or how is it going to be used it's really sort of ironic now that's the way that it was but it hasn't so much anymore now it's it's more about culture and I mean today you know is more controversial than it was back then implants and I don't do more about little D issues more about big D deaf issues I want to respect the culture you know I don't want to stop that it's been over 10 years now recently no no that's fine recently in Boston I did a performance one man show about the history of deaf people and deafness and I wasn't using any sign language I was doing it all visually we opened up the show and I had an overhead there with some of the words and I went to the audience with a sign I said a hearing volunteer please on a sign a person would come up and on the overhead I would communicate with them and I'd say what's your name and I go back and forth talking to them this way and I said could you help me now listen ready I said I have another sign saying I need an interpreter and I'd call somebody up and then I said I'd have the microphone and I start speaking away into the microphone and the interpreter would be like and just doing it cold and the other person is pointing to somewhere in there going and I'm just talking away at the end of it I expose it and it says oralism works and it was on the shirt and I said oral power the 1880's where the deaf school's population started being impacted so I took that shirt off and I said these are the dark ages and then I had another shirt and I do Jabberwocky I mean that kind of stuff worked for me because people would be like whoa yes right yeah yeah so that was in Boston they have a video of it and I've tried to get a copy of it I know they have it maybe you can get them I'd love to have a copy of it but sometimes it's something people don't like to talk about but at least we're talking about it it's not whether or not you support it yes or no it's my opinion okay let me give you an example of a hand shaped rhyme okay one hand shape that continues throughout the poem standing becomes a bird the bird flies up to the sun and then becomes a butterfly on the hat of someone who swats it away the paint brush again makes a tree with a leaf that falls and becomes a waterfall so you see the same hand shape the five hand shape you can go back and forth so if you give me a hand shape like the letter F hand shape S letter S okay F and S so then give me a theme clouds okay okay SF SF okay let me see some flies flying around they form a cloud raindrops fall they hit a person who ends up looking at the sky and walks away see so you can play with that you make a theme and use two hand shapes and use them back and forth well a movie you know they have the camera or they have multiple cameras maybe three cameras and they go back and forth like in the godfather I love the way they use their camera work maybe you use like a rocket as an example see how you go back and forth between the camera angle poetry let's see what is poetry like I was telling Kenny last night we were on the phone and we were talking about poetry and it's like giving birth oh you have something in your head and it's just growing and trying to get out and escape and or like a venus flytrap that catches something and then it grows and tries to come out or it's like the stars from the moon you know all of creation and then finally there's a baby they're screaming and it grows all out and it becomes inside you as a heartbeat and understanding and that's what poetry is I don't know how the fuck do I know good question it's poetry period poetry is here it's there it's everywhere it's this chair it's that building it's my heart it's love it's blood it's sweat it's everything it's language it's sex it's eating it's everything it's poetry it's life it's sharing it's everything and now it's your turn it is your turn