 in and show you what some of my poems are that have been that I've created. I'd really like to let you know I'm very nervous because some of the poems I haven't really fully connected with, I haven't fully memorized, but I've been practicing and I feel fairly comfortable so I hope all goes well. The first poem I'd like to start with is called Eye Music and I'd like to explain a little bit about that. When I was growing up, my parents used to travel, we used to huckle camping in different places and I really loved to lie in my parents' lap and look out the windows at the telephone wires as they went by. If you look at one place you can see them dip and grow and up and down and I love to watch them and much later I would ride on trains and the same phenomenon would occur and I decided to write a poem and I wrote this poem in English first. At that time I couldn't write an ASL until finally I saw someone signing and writing an ASL and I decided to use that method and I decided to write the poem about that experience and music. Eye music of the telephone wires like music sheets with lines that rise and quiver and sway and lower along with the passing of space and time. No ears needed to hear nor any instruments to play. Eyes are the ears and the piano and the flute are the wires and the occasional pole is the drum. Here is one bold wandering wire and now here are five dancing high and low in turns with poles and five disappearing into one again and then a crowd overlapping and then snow. So beautiful to the eye and heart. One wonders what happens inside and the next poem is called Silence O Painful. It's one of my earliest ASL poems I wrote. I was having a relationship with the man at the time and he was also deaf and we could communicate quite well but we had some terrible disputes and after that the man would walk around in the same space in the same room in the same house without speaking to me all day and it made me mad like a wall was between us and I decided to write this poem and I focused on hand shapes and placement. Silence oh painful knowing he has something to say but don't know what and knowing I have something to say but don't know how looking into his eyes a wall forms between us no more eyes passing in invisible words no more quiet heart messages exchanges touching him goose bumps up my arms no more tight hand clasps no more warm braces when he goes he vanishes getting letters signed love no more setting aside things to share why why next poem is called The Dogs. This little story behind this poem there are two deaf organizations in my home area and both of them have been established just five or six months from each other very close but they have such disputes and they wrangle because one is a deaf group that has very formally established a very business-like and they're a deaf agency and they've progressed quite well but the other is kind of low-grade kind of party kind of group very deaf very culturally deaf very comfortable while the other office is so pristine so this low this other group decide to establish their own organization organization very casual but they wrangled about money had this dispute and the program was this was destroyed in that way and I wrote this called The Dogs because I thought this one staff was like mutts and the other staff sounded like um a doberman so that's a condensed version of the story behind this poem the dust settles two dogs sit facing each other one a doberman sharp beard sleek brilliant successful the others a mutt sloppy dirty illiterate tough between them a chain at both ends they have two desperately tugged and tugged at each other but violently running around but still nothing they're bound they sit facing each other growling and the doberman says unfortunately we are dogs alike but we do not associate I resent your presence you lowly animal the mutt says you high and mighty snob I hate your guts I don't need you I kill you if I could but if he's dead I'd have to drag him damn Jane damn way uh why do we have that chain yes what does it mean chain cooperation connectedness creates freedom you notice the F handships I was playing with that came together the chain cooperation freedom okay next poem is called the glass the glass wall this poem I wrote in dedication to two women one was hearing and the other was deaf both worked with the tv news station in in california in my area they had a very successful organization and I respect both of them very well in the world but and at that time the hearing woman right before this she decided to start developing dmi for the dove and they were published they would send out news at five every five minutes once a week they would give a five minute newscast about what was going on in the world to the dove and every night they would have this five minute segment called the glass wall because it was a great idea because they saw that deaf people were very much the same as hearing people but often they couldn't communicate with hearing people as if there was a glass wall between the deaf and the hearing this timing communication that people couldn't pass through and also they explained that this deaf sign language is really great because suppose you're in a train and you're trying to communicate to someone outside the train you can just do so right through the window because you can see each other while hearing people can always say goodbye goodbye and wave goodbye over and over again but and the glass wall is a barrier also between the deaf and the hearing so there are many ideas for that so and there's another meaning for it also you'll see it within the poem so this poem is dedicated to two women thank you thank you these are gestures from our heart pouring out through the glass wall because you and you beyond the glass wall with the frame and ears have shown us that the wall will always be there but not necessarily shaded overlooked that's what we thought live news captioned impossible is possible interpreter full screened impossible is possible our own deaf newscaster is impossible it is possible that with the glass wall with the frame and the ears we could show all what we are really like and what we really need and no matter what the wall is there people beyond and people behind can reach out to each other over it thank you thank you the next poem is entitled sign is like a tree it's a little bit of a political poem is one of my earliest political poems that I wrote in ASL and you can watch and you can see many many signs and many ideas that relate to the deaf experience sign is like a tree once long ago there was a dry seedling inconsequential pressed into the darkness hidden in the midst of the dirt of bare fields for years it lay germinating and then sprouts shut up and then another and then more branches emerged and blossomed the tree became unique and lovely natural creative expressive and then structures began to encroach on the tree civilization began to surround him new trees were sown in cultivated rows perfectly trimmed and boring but people say these sequential trees are perfect people say this tree is not perfect people say this tree does not fit in with their plans people say it's people say it's a good idea to let the chimp swing in that tree people say it's a good idea to hide it away in the forest where no one can see but I disagree that's not the place it's best to let the little girl embrace the tree let it be strong and proud and tall reaching at its arms for all to see to sign next poem is entitled the wedding poem I wrote it for two christian friends of mine who were both hearing their very good friends of mine and when their work got became married they asked me to write a poem for them I thought about it for a long time and I realized they both had a very strong faith in Jesus and after I came thought about it for a while I came up with this poem that I thought blended with their beliefs and along with my beliefs also so this is a poem especially for their wedding and this poem uses stars and shapes and circles and all different symbols in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth began to turn first the sun and then the moon spilled their light onto the planet and the ocean swelled mountains rose from the earth and greens sprouted from the soil sea creatures splashed through the waters and animals danced on the land and the winged dipped into the air from God's hand came one human then another they met together in grace and then from grace they fell into rivalry injury contention hostility of addiction revenge and throughout the earth there was yearning and hunger fear rage and war they killed one another until blood ran the world then into the chaos God reached down his hand to preserve his creation with his own sweat and blood he blessed them and the blessing sparked two flames of hope that burned together building towards grace again and the ultimate sacrifice forged the rings that wed them and their wedding shed a brighter light of grace and love restored praise be to God the next poem has no title I haven't come up with one that I've decided is perfect maybe after you all see the poem you can help me out again it's a bit of a political poem and notice the rhythm in it darkness of time rose the murmur except from one oddly different the crowd stared and cried out death doors slammed sentencing separation lacking in isolation so they thought until the one found another deafness a bond not a barrier more joined us as we discovered our articulate hands and we talked in relief in our freedom of signs when stormed by anthem driven soldiers pitched to fever by the strength of their regime follow me line up now sit the captain with his whip in hand and fix his sentence speak speak speak damn your chains will pronounce our own deliverance and lock you out from lives you will not dominate in the space of our silence we grant each other sanctuary speaking easily in the language that is ours when again there was a pounding from beyond a pounding pounding was insistent but I wonder I don't know I just want to see and so step by step we succumb our silent agreement undone I would like to welcome you all to come out of your dark and silent world and join us in our bright and lovely world those who here are signing yes but such queer signs they shape what waits out there perhaps there's something we should see be careful could it be they now have different strengths cautiously we walk forward into the sterile narrow corridors the unknown maze seems endless and it is constricting us we try to run retreat but we cannot find the safety of our sanctuary and so we walk alone not knowing and the pressure stifles us enlightens with the brightness of someone beckoning burns fall away as we find ourselves released there soon will come a time when war gives way to peace when what was misconstrued is communicated and enemies become friends guns are beaten into plowshares the soon will come to pass is called to a hearing mother and I want to tell you the story behind the poem I used to work in the national theater for the deaf and there was the international association of parents for the deaf of the deaf whatever there was one woman who was the mother of a deaf boy and I used to work with a deaf man myself who had grown up orally but he could sign really well the two of us went to visit that office for some reason to bar the typewriter something to have a discussion and when we left the woman got so angry with that man the way she screamed at him was like she was yelling at her own son even though he was an adult he was 25 years old in the way she manipulated him made me so angry I thought it wasn't fair to how dare this woman treat this adult like a child I thought it was disgusting the way she treated him and and when I walked away from that I didn't know what to do with my feelings I couldn't put them down it dominated in my mind for years just a few months ago finally I got angry enough to let it all come together this is not directed towards this mother in particular but towards all hearing parents of deaf children you and I are of worlds far apart our language is dissimilar our lives always diverged you lived your life unconscious of us your knowledge of deafness consists of just of words overheard though I lived quite aware of you your world oppressed me and then you grew the mystery of a child and bore a boy deaf you were stunned and dismayed I surprised and delighted courageously you carried on yearning that he grow up in your kind I commend you but your son is living a life like mine he has your eyes your hair he's physically of you but he shares my thoughts my world view in languages he's spiritually of me he is your son but he's of my people who does this boy belong to you or me this child is like a tree if not for my people he would be hollow decaying from loneliness empty of soul if not for your people the seed has no sustenance and our noble people our language would diminish and wither our struggle for possession is a saw that slices splinters and the sapling will fall no you and I must blend our nurturing energies emerge into the soil that nourishes the tree so that he may grow to the heavens and my final poem is one entitled children's garden you know like kindergarten children's garden I've used this poem I've taken a lot of excerpts from the bible and incorporate into this poem and into images of the schools for the deaf and this is written for the 25th celebration of of children's schools and schools for the deaf because recently many schools for the deaf have become um and threatened by mainstream programs and perhaps this kind this will never happen again so I thought this performance is very important and so I'd like to perform the poem again for you many years ago in israel this man said it would be better for a man that a mill stone will hang around his neck and he be cast into the sea than for him to offend one of the little ones this man was logos the language the communication god to us we to god we to each other heaven and earth united this man we rejected killed and cast into a tomb deaf children isolated scared ashamed second-class citizens quietly gesturing there are specials flowers sewn one by one and then someone saw they needed to be planted and they grew each one beautiful red yellow blue purple orange a person came along and saw they needed learning lovingly did he replant them in a garden the deaf school scared and shocked they stared at each other slowly realizing they are family of common language people disgusted couldn't tolerate them couldn't stand the colors and preferring the bareness all around the bulldozer oral pillars swept over the garden ignoring someone's crying out in vain smashed the flowers hurting lying there someone came and nurtured them and they began to sign again and the people they couldn't tolerate it so they thought they accused the garden of a ghetto that restrained their minds and they thought you shall be brown mainstreamed and then one dark night an army with sighs sneaked in one by one they cut the flowers and displaced them all of them the red the yellow no roots to wither and die underneath the brown oppression a sacred garden grew smaller wait remember what he said it would be better for a man that a millstone were hanged around his neck and be cast into the sea than for him to offend one of the little ones inspiration we will fight blessed with the rain and sun and wind seed spread and spread and survive growing stronger morning creeps in the tombstone is cast aside this man lives and so this children's garden will live on thank you okay now we're gonna take a 15 minute break it's so exciting to be here i'm finally going to show my work to all of you and it's so incredible to see other people's work displayed and shared with each other it's unbelievable i feel like there's i feel like i'm a newborn baby and it's really exhilarating for me the first poem that i'd like to show thank you good morning and i'd like to i'm both a teacher as you can see i'm dressed as a teacher and a poet and and my vocation and i'm going to explain about my evolution as a poet and where i've come to today i grew up always fascinated in two things one of them was language and the other was theater i was fascinated in both of these fields always it started a long time ago when i was just a little girl i was only one or two years old and my mother who was also deaf was was so such a wonderful teacher for me she'd always sign and explain things and communicate and talk to me and throw signs at me and i've heard stories since the time i was a babe in my mother's arms since i was getting milk from her i started to fingerspell milk and learning stories from my mother also bernard brag was a famous storyteller in that school for the deaf where i was so i saw my as my mother holding her hand and she fingerspelled to me tree and show me tree and she started teaching me from the time i was so little that it really affected me and then once about three years old we started to look at children's book and my mother would tell me the stories and sign she was really a wonderful performer of gifted storyteller and she'd use her mouth and her facial expressions and that's where i've gotten that aspect of my own signing from i've been inherited my style from my mother she was so full of of lively antics as she told her stories her action stories and and then i would read the story and say is that what the story was about that's when i was only when i was very young three or four years old i started to develop an interest in reading because of that and because of my mother's story telling i call her a story performer i would call my mother a story performer i didn't understand that at the time but now i realize she is part of that category of people who was really gifted in storytelling and she caused me to become more fascinated in the english language a long time ago when i was young i was i would say the language i would had the most fascination for was english and now it's both english and asl well i grew up and and went to school i had older deaf students who were very gifted at um sign and they would also tell stories we also had many oral people but not too much we had much more manual people and we had some people who would use a lot of wit in their signs you know gallaudet colors they tend to do that and they also had that use of signs in my school for the deaf my family also went to deaf clubs and we went to picnics and everybody there would tell stories and i love to sit and watch these wonderful storytellers and and see the gossip that went on and see how people express themselves you know they wouldn't let me get too involved because i was a kid but i'd peek around the corner and get what i could but my mother who allowed me as best she could to let me and be involved and she didn't mind if i bothered her too much so i looked as much as i could and i watched storytellers even at ntd the national theater for the deaf the first group including bernard bragg and joe volwitz and orton and orton and norton there was a first group of people involved in the national theater for the deaf and they were from my hometown um and i knew all of them personally and when i would go to see them perform and do their acting on stage i'd enjoy it so much and that was a powerful influence on me when i was a child so let me tell a little bit of a story that was a little bit of a story myself and now i'm going to be go back into the role of teacher storytelling when i was writing the astl curriculum we tried to look at art form and see what kind of signs were used in that we found that they're very important art form had a very important role in the deaf community and we can even label that part of asl poetry and i think that art form has at a very will have a very strong influence on the asl poetry in the future we've also analyzed the way that signs narratives are compared with poetry and helps us to understand the two forms better narratives sign stories and narratives a story or a different from storytelling well i have a list of um characteristics that we that i've developed that are very similar to the kinds of things that debbie developed yesterday for you about her poetry um we've discovered things such as a storyline such as um and character development and details stories are very casually told you can be sitting around in a group telling stories you know how deaf people do they're telling something that went on in their lives whereas the narrative is a more advanced use of the language it's more complex it's more developed um people in the storytelling in the narrative genre people tend to stand in one place but they stand to stand up and as opposed to sit down and they walk around the stage regular storytelling is as usually signed in a smaller signing space but the but the more formal narrative is is is bigger and using a bigger space storytelling is used to give information to give news to tell people what has happened in your life and sometimes people add details and exaggerate a little bit to make it more interesting but the narrative generally has a lesson a moral that it's trying to get across that's another point of the of the more formal narrative storytelling tends to use a direct eye contact with the audience to make sure that the audience is following what you're saying while the more formal narrative tends to be more separate more separated it um the audiences is less involved and the narrative narrator has more control whereas in regular story the audience is free to interrupt at any time in the more formal narrative the audience reacts more as the audience and and sits back and waits to see what will happen and the narrator themselves becomes the reactor and asks what will happen next and answers their own question rhetorically there are four different kinds of classifications that we've developed of storytelling the narrative number one is personal stories that's very similar to the stories i was just explaining to commonly told within the deaf community that that that deputy was talking about yesterday you may say that your roommate came in and went to sleep and then all of a sudden there was a bang on the door and and she was really scared and she thought someone's hair was waving and it was maybe was a witch that's a personal story but when she changed that story and made it more dramatic and went on and on and said then went the layers of covers and then took all four layers of covers off and exaggerated and walked back and forth on the stage she was using what had happened in her personal life to become a narrative um perhaps of another story a person was telling about their deaf father and who built the san francisco bridge he may tell the story to a boy and i know at the dining table and the boy will watch that story and when later he grows up he may develop that story to become a more formal narrative and use more dramatic hand configurations and say and express himself larger and and make the story more developed so in that way he's taking a personal story and making it into a more formal narrative second this is very commonly occurring in the deaf culture is when my mother told me deaf stories and then late that story was a paraphrase of a written story meaning she'll tell a story she'll read a story get the idea of in her head not do a formal translation of it no that'd be a different process that'd be very different process she would not translate it my mother never did that i don't think but she paraphrased the story she read the story and then later told it in her own signs in asl and from that way i got started to understand with the story in the bookman the same as patrick gable yesterday told the story of the black cat they heard the meow and the red bricks and there was a pounding beyond the red bricks that was did that follow exactly what edgar alan poe had written line by line a formal translation of that no patrick had gotten the idea from that story and then told it in his own signs that commonly occurs in literature in the oral tradition and in performing adapted stories not often occur but they do come up once in a while it's not generally performed on a stage but in the home where people are talking with each other telling stories an adapted story is um um here it has a hearing character in it originally for example um the three little pigs you know the story about the three little pigs and the wolf and they huff in the puff and they blow the house down well the three little pig has been adapted to being a story about deaf people and the wolf is is hearing and he's trying to say you're not good enough and then the three little pigs at the end get the best of him and then the second little pig who builds a house of of wood and he thinks it's good enough and and the wolf runs and and blows it down with the one pig who takes good care of himself and builds the house very carefully the wolf can knock it in and when he finally gets climbing down the chimney and gets bored in the pots then the pig has gotten the best of him and he's won in the end and that's been adapted to the deaf culture and deaf people find it really amusing when they see their own culture become alive in a story like this so often it's very spontaneous how people develop adapted stories I don't I haven't done too much of this myself maybe you have more experience in myself original stories are invented they're not taken from any formal literature but um from your own personal experiences and and originally come originally written in ASL it's a story you know the story perhaps where a person is knocking on the door um like Debbie's story with the witch she had that character she had that personal experience but she but really became an original story itself the way she adapted it and she used it for the purpose of teaching hearing people about deafness and about how deaf people would not be able to hear them knocking on the door it's a very clear image another um Ben Bernin Bernin Breen I forget the title of the story but he had um a story about a mother and a witch and the daughter uh the little a little duck was born and the ugly duckling and a story about a a duck with a long beak and a very short beak and something was wrong with the one with the very short beak so they put it off in a school a handicapped school because he had kind of a bent beak and they wanted to make their beaks become much smaller and with their with their wings they tried to um they tried to get free and they tried to work very hard practicing to make their beak smaller they did have an operation to make the beak smaller but they didn't want to do to take take such a drastic measure so they tried to make it smaller by itself so they sang and they pecked at wood to make the beak get smaller and then the the one the one bird with the with the long beak would make fun of that one who was trying to make his beak conform and um all the different animals would make fun of it and and the rabbit would feel bad and then laugh at them laugh at him and he suffered so much and the poor little bird with the long beak and the wings would try to follow the birds the other birds but he couldn't and finally had an operation to make his beak conform like the others but it's still like he didn't belong so there's a moral in that story and I'm sure you all know what's behind that but that story is a very active full of action that's been that's been changed and created to make it a formal story to make it a part of deaf literature this does anybody have a question I'm curious do you have a videotape of any of those stories no I'm sorry we have short little segments that are in the deaf history videotape um that's a story from Bambourine the story about the little birds it's a 20 minute piece he really goes into and tells from the beginning to end it's a wonderful story okay now as a poet I was really involved in the deaf culture and deaf community and in the school for the deaf and then one summer when I was 14 years old I went I was in the school for the deaf and Bernard Bragg and Valdals and a few other the people from NTD were teaching they were teaching creative use of creative language or whatever I forget the title it was a long time ago the title was in English but right previous to that when I was 11 years old I had seen the National Theater for the Deaf they had come to our town and that was a time when people were just beginning to become aware of all of these famous people involved in the National Theater for the Deaf and I was so fascinated with the group of performances they did that were related to poetry they had skits also but I was really fascinated with the poetry Bragg told the poem called Tiger Tiger and that's by Blake that's a poem written by famous English poet named Blake now when I went home I took some of Bragg's lines and tried to copy his style and I'll give you a few lines from that and the interpreter will not be voicing this because she has no idea of the words you know do you know how Bernard Bragg did that and another one that Ursula Bludzi did beautiful how do I love the by Elizabeth Barrett Browning something like that and it was so beautiful and then the know another person Joe Valdes he performed Jabberwocky this was written by Lewis Carroll you know that's a segment from Jabberwocky I was so fascinated with all of these performers and their expertise that I tried to copy them and I became involved and I became really excited about the idea of combining sign language and theater I didn't know that I carried that around with me but when I was age 14 I was at school and Bernard Bragg came and Valdes came and they were signing they were trying to teach us how to sign in a poetic way I was really enjoying that summer camp and we also that time we're writing poems too and we're sharing them with the others in our group so like does that bother you the purple color of my blazer okay that poem entitled fuchsias I don't know if you have them here but it's a kind of flower and it dangles hangs and it has little loops and and the stems and the little orange pistons in the middle and the white in the middle it's very beautiful in my home there's so many of this kind of flower and they're always dangling looking so lovely and I decided to write a poem about that and I thought it was really sweet I put it down on paper and it was published on the front cover of the school magazine with a picture of fuchsias much later I decided to translate that to sign language and I'll sign it for you now as I look deeply in the early morning onto the lovely fuchsias still wet with the night's dew whirling whirling with the wind they remind me of my lovely vision of a budding ballerina whirling with the music so that was very sweet and then after that period I entered high school and there was one teacher that was from the same school that I had been in before and he was very much influenced on me named joe velas he loved to sign and he was a very romantic signer he wrote a lot of poetry both in sign and asl he was also a dramatist too of course I was so fascinated with language and drama that I thought the combination was perfect for me and my interest built he taught me so hard and and criticized me and was a real inspiration and I took a class in fact most of my classes were taken under him as a teacher and he was so dead it's such a dedicated teacher I was really impressed I'm very very grateful to mr. velas I wrote one poem when I was with him called my travels with malts and I have the English translation that the interpreter will read this is the name of this teacher that was such an influence to me is named eric malzkun every day I go to the humble but fresh ship and I fastened myself to the space seat which you provide and you go to your switchboard with its flashing lights and the countdown begins three two one blast off off we go and way out of the world's limits into the deep space we store sore following the wild shooting stars as free as your imagination thrilled I sit there sometimes turning your ship taxi turbies I try to help 26 lettered words come and go as we dance through space well don't worry most of them remain because you fish me in and nail them on me we've landed on a rich planet of books you fill my arms with books and load your ship to it is a doubt we never return huffing and puffing we're warned to the space once more again we follow the path of the six seconds stars and safely return home with me dazzled with excitement in time you see how I wrote the standards I used space to show the differences between my ideas ASL can also use a can also use space in that way I had known that at the time but I started to realize that that the way I wrote things down on paper correlated with the ways I thought of it in sign ocean huge and blues spreads out in space ripples getting bigger and bigger waves bigger and visor bigger splashing his hands upon an old rock rising up and up on top of tree old and crooked watches and muses upon the ocean both conflict it both blend okay now you see the way the standards are situated upon the page one indicating the ocean how it's on the left side of the page washing up on the right side of the page against the old rock you know now you see how you have to read from side to side you have to figure out which way you want to read it I first I had um I played with different ways to write it but I thought it didn't work on paper next I tried a similar idea put it in a different way this is entitled oh this is called love song love song sign you see how o's are written on both sides of the paper I use simultaneous movement of my hands on either side of my body and in the middle my heart beats in the middle of my of the signing space as in the middle of the page for you and I love you much much much it's kind of a bit much a little bit sickly sweet but and then I have part two you are like the gentle rain that falls on my face you are like the sun this shines warmly on my face both are coming from either direction I do have a question