American Sign Language and Poetry II

Here you see Dori Vaughn who works in a school as an interpreter/ educational assistant for children who cannot hear, practicing on a text of a poem. When I asked her whether she could sign some poems, she hesitated a moment and said yes. Signing is interpreting. American Sign Language (ASL) is not “English”. So she practiced while I spoke the text and she looked for the best rendering of the image or the concept. She also practiced ‘off the page’. Working from a written text is a job not many interpreters like to do, and poetic language of course is an extra challenge. She also discussed the content of the poem, what I had meant, how it came about. I however wanted to know how she read the poems, because a poem once written, is read and interpreted by the reader and might carry a different weight or connotation. Here you can see that Dori did a great job and added to the beauty of the event of April 30, 2012: desert poetry night.