Constructing visual images in creative sign language in solo and collaborative performance: Space and embodiment

ABSTRACT

This article considers ways in which signing poets use space to produce visual images, creating aesthetic and metaphorical effects using the options available to sign languages and their bodies, whether in a solo performance or jointly constructed as duets or living tableaus. Close reading of sign language poetry shows poets use their bodies to demonstrate poetic images directly, by embodying the referent so they ‘become’ it, or by showing it through a transfer onto different parts of the body. Even richer images with additional metaphorical meaning arise when poets perform with others, especially to convey concepts of contrast or unity. The article draws primarily upon poetic performances in South African Sign Language (SASL) at Signing Hands Across the Water 2, an international sign poetry festival held in Johannesburg in 2014. It also considers works in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and British Sign Language (BSL) – two languages whose rich poetic activity has not yet received much research interest. Analysis of this creative work offers ways for poets working in any sign language to develop their creations. Additionally, such an analysis informs the wider artistic and literary world about possibilities for creating visual linguistic art forms.

KEYWORDS:

• sign language poetry
• cinematic signing
• signed duets
• signed collaborative performance
• living tableaus

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the poets, whose work appears in this analysis, for their permission to use their material freely. I also thank the students of the 2015 course in Deaf Literature at the Federal University of Santa Catarina for having quite so much fun recreating the images of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro and their permission to reproduce it here. The first draft of this article was completed on a writing retreat sponsored by the University of the Witwatersrand and organised by Michiko Kaneko. Part of this article was written with funding from CAPES, Brazil, BEX 17881/12-9. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insights.

Note on Contributor

Rachel Sutton-Spence is a lecturer in Brazilian Sign Language Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Previously, she was Reader in Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol, UK.