I have two deaf boys they’re so rare and
so unique I’m blessed and they are
blessed because they can play with their
sign language and their home environment
which is a safe space for them when I
watched them sign I realized what a
treasure sign language is and I thought
about how to preserve it and I’ve
realized it’s through the arts my
objective is simple
I just want my boys to comprehend their
place in the lineage of the language and
the richness and the complexity of it as
I was growing up in eighth grade I wrote
a story and the teacher offered me two
options whether to sign that story to
the class or to speak it and I chose to
speak it at that time
because through my upbringing I had been
told repeatedly that speech was superior
while sign language was sidelined and I
had never been taught to translate from
the written word into a signed
performance and growing up I never had
any deaf role models until I was 16
years old and for the first time I saw a
deaf poet Peter Cook and his linguistic
expression just blew my mind
sky-high such that when I landed I had
this realization about what my thoughts
were about sign language being so simple
and for communication only I realized
that it had these other modalities that
had this depth and this fiber to it I
became a teacher I taught kindergarten
through third grade and taught sign
language to deaf students but that three
times of exposure per week for 45
minutes was those students only safe
space to play with language to
experiment and to build on their
concepts can you imagine not
any time outside of that returning to
their home environment potentially
without communication as compared to my
boys who were utterly privileged but I
don’t want to limit them to the two role
models of myself and my wife I would
like their diet of role models to be
varied and full just as you wouldn’t
feed broccoli consistently every day to
the child you’d want to provide them
with a varied diet of fruit and
vegetables because the more nutrition
you’re able to offer them the healthier
their development because what happened
to me should not happen to any other
deaf children that’s why I left the
classroom and came to the world and
founded my own deaf Poets Society one
component of which of three is ASL slam
the mission of which is to provide a
platform to create a safe space for the
deaf community to play with their
language of science and to learn to play
and to have fun with that and we pull
out we pull in other talent and other
artists to express themselves on stage
so that they can share their work and
inspire that audience because we want to
seed the next generation of talent and
we want to water those seeds and grow
them up so that we can have more deaf
another component of that deaf Poets
Society is establishing additional
chapters of ASL slam in cities around
the country with the same mission as the
home event and then the third component
is touring around the world we just went
to Jamaica
I just went to Cuba on Norway and I’m
going to Australia next regardless of
various eco socio-economic statuses of
those places we are travelling and
bringing that mission to the
places you know each country around the
whether Australia or any of those other
places I mentioned so we use
international sign to communicate to
respect their language and I have a
which makes a more image based approach
so that we can reach out to those
international deaf communities around
the world so I’ll show you a poem now
and the interpreter will not be speaking
[Applause]
so maybe some of you could follow that
and visualize it maybe some of you
couldn’t but this is a visual poetry I
feel like it’s a visual a soundless
visual musical composition this poem was
the first poem that I crafted in the
visual vernacular that had that built-in
meter to it and rhythm and that allowed
me to begin to collaborate with a
variety of different musicians and to
test out of that process that
collaborative process that I felt like
it would be important to correlate sound
to that visual poetry and then I worked
with the merge art collective a woman
named Mia at that organization asked me
to compose a poem which I did gave them
the video and she went through the poem
and composed score to match up with it
and then we teamed up with more
musicians and rehearsed repeatedly until
it was polished and of course coming
here to Vienna
I brought the score and met two Austrian
musicians so I would like to welcome
them to the stage so we can show you
that collaboration live here
[Music]
so that’s a visual poetic composition
merged with a musical composition the
goal of that is to be able to reach out
not just to International deaf community
but also to the broader hearing
community so that you all can see and
understand the richness and the
complexity that sign language has within
it it’s badass
so now I want you as you leave to go
seek out your deaf communities to
collaborate with them and make the world
a safe space this was I want my boys to
continue the lineage of the language we
want the entire world to be a safe space
for the deaf community today I stand before you and I choose to sign
so unique I’m blessed and they are
blessed because they can play with their
sign language and their home environment
which is a safe space for them when I
watched them sign I realized what a
treasure sign language is and I thought
about how to preserve it and I’ve
realized it’s through the arts my
objective is simple
I just want my boys to comprehend their
place in the lineage of the language and
the richness and the complexity of it as
I was growing up in eighth grade I wrote
a story and the teacher offered me two
options whether to sign that story to
the class or to speak it and I chose to
speak it at that time
because through my upbringing I had been
told repeatedly that speech was superior
while sign language was sidelined and I
had never been taught to translate from
the written word into a signed
performance and growing up I never had
any deaf role models until I was 16
years old and for the first time I saw a
deaf poet Peter Cook and his linguistic
expression just blew my mind
sky-high such that when I landed I had
this realization about what my thoughts
were about sign language being so simple
and for communication only I realized
that it had these other modalities that
had this depth and this fiber to it I
became a teacher I taught kindergarten
through third grade and taught sign
language to deaf students but that three
times of exposure per week for 45
minutes was those students only safe
space to play with language to
experiment and to build on their
concepts can you imagine not
any time outside of that returning to
their home environment potentially
without communication as compared to my
boys who were utterly privileged but I
don’t want to limit them to the two role
models of myself and my wife I would
like their diet of role models to be
varied and full just as you wouldn’t
feed broccoli consistently every day to
the child you’d want to provide them
with a varied diet of fruit and
vegetables because the more nutrition
you’re able to offer them the healthier
their development because what happened
to me should not happen to any other
deaf children that’s why I left the
classroom and came to the world and
founded my own deaf Poets Society one
component of which of three is ASL slam
the mission of which is to provide a
platform to create a safe space for the
deaf community to play with their
language of science and to learn to play
and to have fun with that and we pull
out we pull in other talent and other
artists to express themselves on stage
so that they can share their work and
inspire that audience because we want to
seed the next generation of talent and
we want to water those seeds and grow
them up so that we can have more deaf
another component of that deaf Poets
Society is establishing additional
chapters of ASL slam in cities around
the country with the same mission as the
home event and then the third component
is touring around the world we just went
to Jamaica
I just went to Cuba on Norway and I’m
going to Australia next regardless of
various eco socio-economic statuses of
those places we are travelling and
bringing that mission to the
places you know each country around the
whether Australia or any of those other
places I mentioned so we use
international sign to communicate to
respect their language and I have a
which makes a more image based approach
so that we can reach out to those
international deaf communities around
the world so I’ll show you a poem now
and the interpreter will not be speaking
[Applause]
so maybe some of you could follow that
and visualize it maybe some of you
couldn’t but this is a visual poetry I
feel like it’s a visual a soundless
visual musical composition this poem was
the first poem that I crafted in the
visual vernacular that had that built-in
meter to it and rhythm and that allowed
me to begin to collaborate with a
variety of different musicians and to
test out of that process that
collaborative process that I felt like
it would be important to correlate sound
to that visual poetry and then I worked
with the merge art collective a woman
named Mia at that organization asked me
to compose a poem which I did gave them
the video and she went through the poem
and composed score to match up with it
and then we teamed up with more
musicians and rehearsed repeatedly until
it was polished and of course coming
here to Vienna
I brought the score and met two Austrian
musicians so I would like to welcome
them to the stage so we can show you
that collaboration live here
[Music]
so that’s a visual poetic composition
merged with a musical composition the
goal of that is to be able to reach out
not just to International deaf community
but also to the broader hearing
community so that you all can see and
understand the richness and the
complexity that sign language has within
it it’s badass
so now I want you as you leave to go
seek out your deaf communities to
collaborate with them and make the world
a safe space this was I want my boys to
continue the lineage of the language we
want the entire world to be a safe space
for the deaf community today I stand before you and I choose to sign
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