Pioneer of sign poetry

Dorothy (‘Dot’) Miles (1931 – 1993) was a renowned Deaf poet and activist who developed the concept of sign language poetry: a key figure in the literary heritage of sign language and the Deaf community.

You can view her work here http://www.bristol.ac.uk/education/research/sites/micsl/poem-repository/poems3 and find out more about her here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Miles

Metaphor in Creative Sign Language project

If your appetite has been whetted by Johanna Mesch's work in sign language poetry - here is the Bristol University project. There is a collation of films plus a lot more information about the sign poets.

You can view the complete archive here http://www.bristol.ac.uk/education/research/sites/micsl/

Sign language poetry

Johanna Mesch is an academic and poet working in Sweden at Stockholm University. The poetry project was a collaboration with Bristol University looking at Metaphor in creative sign language.

You can watch her sign language poem Party along with other examples here http://www.youtube.com/user/signmetaphor

Pushkin's babushka

I love this story - about time Europe and Australasia got in on the poetry idol act. YouTube competition, hot poets, a crime against stereotypes! Young poets again this time 18 to 25 years old...

The Moscow Times says "Unless you have travelled forward in time from the beginning of the 20th century, writing rhymes might not seem like the hippest thing to do. Such an old-fashioned skill probably won't even get you a date."

Strange it has always got poetandgeek one!

More information here http://www.demotix.com/news/1989782/poetry-battle-moscow-vs-st-peterburg#media-1988116 and here http://russialist.org/pushkins-grandmother-brings-russian-poetry-back-to-life/.

More young poets

Enter this competition and see how you fare...if Vivienne Westwood doesn't want you, who cares. Anyone anywhere in the world can enter but you need to write in English.

Full details available here http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/fyp/

Well festival of literature poetry competition 2013

Wells in Somerset, England is a beautiful town with a striking cathedral outside of which poetandgeek once purchased some long-lasting walking socks in an open-air market. Good on many levels.

Have a bash at this poetry competition - only £5 a shot and deadline is 31st July - while you are hunting up the cathedral on wikipedia. The scissor arches are well worth a look.

More details here http://www.wellslitfest.org.uk/competitions.php

In the textile gallery

This poem was written in the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) where there is a display on Dr Schunk and other eminent Victorian dye chemists. Good stuff. The poem was first published in Iota.

Before you read it, or after - go and sign the petition to save the museum here http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/science-museum-group-save-the-museum-of-science-and-industry-mosi

In the textile gallery


Some of the substances contained in lichen
make bright dye; brush past a lily’s stamen
and your shirt is streaked with red and orange
showing against nap or strong pattern.

In Schunk’s laboratory, flowers grew on desks,
grasses twisted in the many-drawered chests
and, one corner set aside, the place for cotton.
Each strand dropped in a vial specked with forgotten
leaves, stalks, shellfish, reeds and rock
that he hauled back into a finely written log.

Colours the clothmen fought to use in their design
resplendent in granny’s cover for chaise longue
and pelmet. Fabrics that still give me a pang
stretched in ranks of glass case and machine.

  © Bridget Khursheed