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 3rd-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 1st and 2nd 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.
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