Gender and translation issues in BSL poetry

This is a bit of a ramble (perhaps I should try the discipline of the 'best bike ride' post and get it into 300 words) but I want to explore some of the issues we've had while working on the poems at www.bristol.ac.uk/bslpoetryanthology

 

We need to consider issues of gender in BSL and English poems for two reasons: firstly for understanding the meaning of the poem in relation to the gender of the poet (“I”) the audience (“you” in English) and other people, characters and entities mentioned in the poem (“she” and “he” in English); and secondly for translating between two languages which have very different needs and expectations in relation to mentioning gender. 

The English pronouns “I” and “you” do not specify gender, and most of the time context will do it for us; face to face we can see the speaker and addressee, and in writing we often know the name of the writer, speaker or addressee, which gives us a clue to their gender.  Poems, though, are often removed from context so they leave more room for interpretation over the gender of the “I” and “you”, especially when they are written because there is more distance between the poet and the reader.  

The written form of English makes these poems less immediately related to the poet, compared to the live “embodied” performance of a signed poem. This effect of assuming that the “I” of a poem is the same gender as the performer is even stronger in the BSL poetry in our anthology than it is in written poetry.  There are poems in our anthology composed and performed by men and women.   All the poems collected are original compositions, performed by their creators, so we know the gender of the real poets: Donna and Johanna are women; Paul, Richard and John are men.  

When they perform their poems, we see their bodies signing so if they say “I” in the poem (for example in Donna Williams’ Who am I) we assume the “I” of the implied poet is also of the poet’s gender.

When they embody a character in the poem, there is a natural tendency for us to assume the character is of the same gender.  The person preparing for the intimate dinner party in Johanna’s poem Party is assumed to be female because Johanna is.  The person stuck in the dream-world in Looking for Diamonds and the person eating the apple in Surprise Apple is assumed to be male because Richard is. (And, in fact, Johanna and Richard have confirmed that they do intend the characters to be a woman and a man, respectively)

Some signed poems clearly have a narrator and some simply start “in character” so we see the story from their viewpoint and actions but they do not necessarily use the pronoun “I”. We are also likely to assume that these narrators or main protagonists are of the same gender as the poet-performer, unless there is something in the performance to make it clear that this is not the case.  Paul clearly tells us that it is a woman shopping for her holiday reading in Two Books (although the gender of the personified books is far less clear), and Johanna’s Son makes it clear that she is shifting between portraying a mother and a son. 

We bring cultural expectations to some of the protagonists.  For example, in Paul Scott’s Doll we know that girls normally play with dolls so we automatically assume that the human in the poem is a girl, but we can’t be sure, and there is an extra element of doubt because Paul, as a man, is signing it. The gender of the protagonist in Richard’s Make-up Theatre is also not clear because, although he is signing it, we assume from the world knowledge that we bring to the poem - and from his performance style - that it is a woman. We have discussed with him whether the character could be a drag queen and he has agreed that it is a possible interpretation but that the characterisation is intended to be that of a woman, no matter how exaggerated it is. 

The problems of identifying the gender behind “I” in signed poems extend to the gender of non-first person. In BSL, it is possible to talk about other people and characters extensively without mentioning their gender.  This is especially relevant for understanding the meaning of poems. Sometimes signing poets deliberately leave the gender of the character vague so that the audience can decide for themselves.  The “lack” of gender in BSL 3^rd-person pronouns is usually no problem and signers barely notice the issue unless they need to clarify it and then they easily do it in many ways (we should note, after all, that English speakers rarely worry about the “lack” of gender in 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns).  But it does become a problem when we try to translate BSL poems into English because when English speakers need to refer to someone else, the language forces them to use gender-specific pronouns – she, he, her, him, hers, his, and so on - and keeping the gender neutral for third person creates very marked (unusual) use of the language.  (We can avoid being specific by using plurals such as “they” and in informal English it is becoming increasingly acceptable to use “they” for a gender-neutral singular form, but generally, the problem remains.) 

Sometimes it is clear from the poem’s context if the character or person being referred to in the poem is male or female.  In Paul’s Three Queens, we know from the title that the three main characters are female; in Macbeth of the Lost Ark, we know the protagonist is male because he must be Macbeth (and we know this is the name of a man) and we know the man at the end is a man because we are told so; in Richard’s Jack in the Box, we know the child is a boy because he repeatedly says “I’m a good boy”.  

Our world knowledge also guides us to interpret genders even when they are not specified in the poem. In Richard’s poem Children’s Park, cultural expectation suggests it is a boy on the swings and a girl skipping, although we cannot be sure. In Paul’s Doll, the fact that dolls are usually thought of as female (pace Barbie’s Ken and G.I. Joe) and the convention that make-up is usually for females allow us to assume the doll is also female.

In Richard’s Looking for Diamonds we probably assume that the implied poet and narrator is a man (mainly because Richard is a man and it is his poem) so our cultural assumptions and knowledge of most typical situations might lead us to think that the person who comes up to him at the end as his true love is a woman.  However, it is perfectly possible from the lack of specification in the poem that the person could be a man (and, indeed, Richard’s portrayal of that character is studiedly neither very masculine nor very feminine – he leaves it to the audience to decide).

The gender of the poet and performer also influences our underlying feelings of the gender of animals. Paul’s Turkey is definitely male because he has a snood, but Richard’s Goldfish and Paul’s Dog (in Teach a Dog a New Trick) feel more likely to be male because men are signing them (is the goldfish gay too? There is nothing in the poem to tell us either way), and Donna’s duckling (in Duck and Dissertation) may be female because Donna is signing it. The gender of the frogs in Richard’s Prince Looking for Love is deliberately ambiguous – who is the prince? Is he one of the frogs?  Are both frogs male or is one female?  If one of each, which one?  (Or is the human the prince?  We might assume from our knowledge of fairy tales that the human is a princess but we are never told the gender of the human, either.)

Even though we know that inanimate objects have no gender, the sex of the performers makes us assume one gender is more likely than the other even for them; Richard’s vain Mirror, the evil Cochlear Implant and the cheerful Deaf Trees are implied somehow to be “male”, Paul’s Mountain and Sea in Too Busy to Hug and the books in Two Books, also feel male (perhaps the books even more so because they are flirting with the woman customer) but Johanna’s Ocean feels more female.

Given these circumstances we are often forced by English to make a gender judgement that we cannot easily – or accurately – make from the BSL poems. We do not want to automatically assume anything. Perhaps

audiences will enjoy playing with the mental images that come from considering the other gender from the one first assumed from seeing the performer.  This will add another layer of appreciation to many of the poems and highlights another special dimension of signed poetry.

Deaf group rights - how to sign RIGHT

I went to hear Steve Emery's public lecture on The Minority Group Rights of Deaf People on Monday 22nd November.  By the end of it I realised I don't really know what rights are and I am not entirely sure what a Deaf group is, either.  There was plenty of food for thought.

And I started thinking about the sign RIGHT - as in "A power or privilege granted by an agreement or law".  When I first learned BSL, the sign meaning this sort of right was the same signs as the sign meaning "correct" and only the context distinguished it (as it still does in English, of course.) But over the last few years, a new sign for the 'power and privilege' meaning has come in - with the upturned flat open 'B' hand contacting the contralateral chest.

Now it is shifting.  Steve articulated it at that lecture in a way I have now seen it quite often, at the sternum.  That central area is used in signs for concepts that are central to the self such as "I", "Identity" and "character" so this new location feels as though the rights are accorded to the whole person and the core of the 'self'.

Then, in the Q&A afterwards, Iain articulated the same sign at waist level and almost ipsilaterally (certainly the ipsilateral side of central). The lower signs are more metaphorically to do with the core of your being.  Paddy Ladd's concept DEAFHOOD (referring to the process of being Deaf that extends way beyond what the ears might or might not be doing) is articulated at diaphragm level, and the same sign RIGHT when Iain signed it had more of a feeling of the visceral needs but it also felt much more practical and less abstracted than a sign higher up the body.  A sign BUSINESS has the same handshape and inward movement and is at the same height but contacts the side of the body at the waist, not the front.  Putting RIGHT down where BUSINESS is suggests more of the active process of having rights - taking them and doing something with them.

Afterwards, I saw another sign, in which the articulating hand doesn't contact the body at all.  Instead, it is directed to and contacts the index finger of the non-dominant hand.  Far less personal, far more "grammatical" (involving a classifier sign for a single, probably human, entity) and more detached, it feels more abstract and theoretical. It also is more individualistic, and it suggests the rights accorded to an individual rather than to a group. It feels very odd to sign RIGHT towards a classifier sign for a collective group

It will be interesting to see where this ends because I suspect it's not over yet. So far we have only seen where the rights end up; we have yet to see where they come from

Wholemeal sourdough

If I spent even a short hour googling around researching how to make sourdough bread properly  I'd be able to make much better bread.  That's not the point for me.  I am determined not to be systematic.  This is an area of my life where I don't want to be organised and I resolutely refuse to aim for perfection.  I am learning to revel in the safe unpredictability. We have learned that it will taste good no matter how disastrously it turns out otherwise, so I can play and experiment, free from any worries of success or failure.

The starter came out of the freezer on Sunday morning and I fed and talked to it and had it on the radiator until Monday evening, when we realised I wouldn't be able to bake on Tuesday. So it went back in the fridge and came out again on Tuesday night, when I fed it and talked to it again and left it on the dining room table near, but not on, the radiator ready for Wednesday morning.

This one was meant to be with strong white and the fag-end of a bag of rye flour.  But it was an unusual brand of flour and I didn't recognise the colour of the bag and by the time I'd up-ended it into the bowl with the starter I realised it was wholemeal.  Hey ho, so it became wholemeal and the fag-end of the bag of rye.  I added extra water because it's wholemeal and left it on the radiator all day.  I set it at 8am and we cooked it at 8pm.  I gave it 55 minutes at 200 but really it could have had another 10 minutes because even so the middle is pretty dense.  It feels exactly like a brick and cutting it requires a sharp breadknife and sturdy wrist muscles, and steel-capped boots are recommended as a Health and Safety precaution.  But it tastes bloody good.

BSL poetry changes the world

Dorothy Miles memorably said that the aim of sign language poetry was to change the world.  She did like to think big, but last night I think it did, in a small way.

The students at the University of Bristol Signing Society had asked me to give a 45 minute talk on BSL poetry.  I've been focusing so much on the work of new poets recently that I thought it was time to revisit Dorothy's work.  I dusted off her poem 'Trio' and talked to them about it.  There wasn't any way to project a video of Dorothy's signed performance of it, so I did it myself and then talked about how BSL poetry works, using 'Trio' to illustrate it.  It think on the whole the audience found it interesting (nobody fell asleep, or if they did, they didn't snore and disturb the rest of us, and nobody threw anything or burst into tears or stormed out) and their questions at the end were nice ones.

So far, so not very unusual.  But at the end of it a deaf student came up to me.  She said she had been to a mainstream school (so, with hearing classmates) and had never seen sign language poetry before.  She has been a signer all her life but for the first time, seeing that poem, she felt truly proud of her sign language.  She said that the poetry felt like music to her.  Watching it she felt warm and comfortable - like it was something soft and gentle.

Sometimes, researching and publishing, and teaching formal undergraduate and masters-level courses, I can lose sight of what sign language poetry can do.  Perhaps learning about it last night changed the hearing students' worlds in a small way, but that one young woman seeing Trio and understanding for the first time how sign language poetry can make you proud to be a Deaf signer - that changed her world, and it changed mine too.

I think Dorothy would be pleased.  I am inserting the recording of her performance of Trio too.  I hope she wouldn't mind that, either.

The Ride of your Life

Recently CTC ran a competition to describe, in under 300 words, the best ride you'd ever done.  There was no way I could possibly pick out the best ride I've ever done, so I came up with this.  Needless to say, it didn't win.  Apart from anything else, it wasn't really in answer to their question.  And I am very glad it didn't win because the prize was a cycling holiday in the Scottish Borders - which sounds great until you learn you had to take it sometime between the end of October and Christmas.

So, here is what I think has been the best ride I've ever done:

It’s yelling to your dad, “Don’t let go!” but he does and you wobble on, triumphant. It’s country lanes, city streets, backroutes and backroads. It’s the haven of a cycle lane and the relief of survival without one. It’s a Brompton on a bus, full suspension in Wales and a German carbon-fibre dream-machine hired for the week. It’s leaving home half-asleep and getting to work full of beans; it’s leaving work half-dead and getting home full of life. It’s cruising past summer traffic jams and knowing you’d not trade places; it’s cowering in a rush-hour gutter in the wet winter darkness and knowing you’d not trade places.  It’s the hypnotic monotony of training rides and the ridiculous pain of a time trial.  It’s 200 miles around a lake through the Swedish night and it’s 14,000’ up in the Rocky Mountains.  It’s Cornish granny gears and maxing out across the Cheshire Plains.  It’s lochshore rhododendrons and the roadside ripple of a Hebridean otter.  It’s a buzzard gliding at your shoulder and a peregrine streaking overhead.  It’s your photo under the fingerpost at John O’Groats. It’s dipping your rear wheel in the Pacific, and your front wheel in the Atlantic, with mountains and deserts and cornfields and forests in between.  It’s knowing you can trust a stranger on two wheels anywhere in the world and that they will trust you. It’s impotent rage at a headwind and a Titan’s strength in a tailwind. It’s being too cold to think and too tired to care, and finding nirvana in a cup of tea. It’s when they yell to you, “Don’t let go!” but you do and you watch them wobble on, triumphant.  It’s the ride of your life.

And maybe that's why I ride.  Sometimes.

BSL sign FEMINIST

To my mind, the BSL sign FEMINIST was always a compound of WOMAN+FIST, where the fist was the fist of a militant feminist such as we saw in the 1970s and 1980s.  The same fist was used in the signs COMMUNIST and MILITANT. In signing FEMINIST, I always moved the fist backward slightly with a sharp movement, to add the feeling that it is a powerful fist.

Recently I saw someone signing it in the context of" feminist theory" and thought I detected something different.  The fist was further forward and had slight repetitive forward movements.  In BSL the hand as a fist is used grammatically to mark the possessive: MY has the fist pointing to the self; YOUR has the fist pointing at the addressee; HIS/HER/ITS points the fist at the person or thing, whether present or established in linguistic space.  If the fist has small, repetitive movements, that makes it an habitual possessive, referring to a tendency, so it means something more like MY-WAY, YOUR-WAY, HIS-WAY.  If someone signed DEAF DEAF-WAY they'd mean, "that's the Deaf way of being and doing - that's who Deaf are".  So if you sign WOMAN+FIST with the repeated small forward movement it changes from WOMAN+MILITANT to WOMAN+WOMAN-WAY.  After all, that is also what Feminist entails.

I am fascinated and delighted that the meaning of the fist can be reinterpreted in either way, to mean militant or the way of doing and being a woman

What I do is me

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote
" As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves -- goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came."


While I don't want to get too profound about it all (after all, there's a lot about Hopkins that is, to my mind, just a little odd) I do like the last line "What I do is me: for that I came".  So this blog is aobut what I do, because what I do is me, and, in some ways I can say for this I came.(And, yes, I know there is a second verse, but we aren't going into that here).

Other people got to "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" before me - especially Rumer Godden - so I will be pleased to take the second part "Dragonflies draw flame".  And anyway, I rather prefer second things to first things.  It's said that nobody remembers who came second.  Well, more fool nobody, I say, because second is very good.   I found out recently that my father has striven throughout his life to be second.  It's a worthy aspiration - it takes a lot of effort to come second, and second means very good indeed, but without the terrifying and unnecessry baggage of first.  Never let perfection be the enemy of the good. In fact, second may be the best place.  There's a lot more space for living and doing in the lives of people who aim for second.  Kingfishers are magnificent.  I love them. But the flash of a dragonfly is something too.

I want to share cycling thoughts, and I want it to be about sign language thoughts and other things I do that make me me but that might be of interest to others.  Alliteratively, it can be about bicycles, BSL and bread-baking. And it can be about things that don't begin with B too.