Poems written by deaf poets
You hold the word in hand;
And though your voice may speak, never
(though you might tutor* it for ever)
can it achieve the hand-wrought* eloquence
of this sign. Who in the word alone can say that day is sunlight, night is dark!
Oh remark
The signs for living, for being
inspired, excited – how similar they.
Your lightest word in hand
lifts like a butterfly, or folds
in liquid motion: each gesture holds
echoes of action or shape or reasoning.
Within your hands perhaps you form a clear
new vision – Man’s design for living;
so giving
sign-ificance to Babel’s tongues
that henceforth he who sees aright* may hear.
You hold the word in hand
And offer the palm of friendship
At frontiers where men of speech lend lipService* to brotherhood, you pass, unhampered
Buy sounds that drown the meaning, or by fear
Of the foreign-word-locked fetter*;
Oh, better
The word in hand than a thousand
Spilled from the mouth upon the hearless* ear.
Dorothy Miles 1976 (1931 – 1993)
tutor: teach
hand-wrought: hand-made
aright: properly
lend lip-service: say something you don’t mean
fetter: chained and held prisoner
hearless: deaf
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MORNING
Sunrise
The rain stops – and the wind dies
Stillness
See, in the pool,
Twin trees
AFTERNOON
I eat and sit, replete,
My dog does too.
A sparrow pecks and perches –
The three of us doz-z-ze!
EVENING
Like a flower the sun folds itself up.
Darkness, like a bat, flies close,
And closer –
Deaf-blinds me!
by Dorothy Miles
BSLversjonen av diktet finnes på videoen ”CACDP BSL Lingvistics ”.
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By John Wilson
I came across a ship in a bottle
Its three masts proud, laced with sails.
The plaque beneath read, “Whaler”.
Her trade was killing whales.
Milan 1880, Milan.
Every Deaf person is taught to remember…
The sea is high, the sails full blown,
A sailor mounts the crow’s nest.
He sees the spray. “There she blows. All hands on deck.
Man the row boats!”
A graceful tail slices the waves.
“Pull, pull, pull”
“We’re gaining on her!”
The harpoons in hand, he sights the target, he launches –
Smack!
Deaf children, happily signing. Then, “Yes you, out to the front.”
The cane is flexed, a tiny hand outstretched and Smack!
“Hold her steady, I’ll hit home this time.”
Stung, the whale dives, pushing deeper and deeper through the
dark.
But he is forced back up, breathless and choking.
M, m, k, k, k, p, p, p
The whale breaks the surface
Its tail slapping, splashing, splashing….
Then silence.
The ocean clouds red.
Whack, whack, whack.
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Three red stripes, blood on your hands.
1980. “Save the whales!”
People take to the streets, shouting their protest.
The doors of the Deaf Schools are closing.
Deaf people take to the streets, shouting their protest.
Why? They’re killing our language!
Why? They’re killing our whales!
Stop!
The BSL dictionary gives us our language to learn, to teach, to
make the children happy.
“Hey, hey, over here!” Flash.
The flashbulbs explode in waves of lights
As the mighty head bursts majestically from the depths
A graceful tail slices the waves and disappears beneath.
And all is calm.
Det finnes en BSLversjon av diktet. Spør om å se den på kompetansesenteret.
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Let it pulse
Let it throb
Let it beat free to sign
Deaf drum
Those who don’t hear it
Use their heart not their minds
Don’t know how to listen
Are deaf to our signs
Deaf drum
Oh they’ve tried and they’ve tried
And they’ve tried and they’ve tried
For hundreds of years
To silence
Deaf drum
Let it pulse
Let it throb
Let it beat free to sign
Deaf drum…
…From the mist of the morning air
Where our children rise
And sign with the sun
And the warmth of our love
And in the night where they sleep
Listen
Listen
Let it pulse
Let it throb
Let it beat free to sign
Deaf drum
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Deaf history
In 1874 Tylor wrote about BSL. He used the observations of a deaf man who was a
teacher. The deaf man was called Kruse.
Tylor had a great interest for language and contact with many deaf adults and
children. He explained the grammar of BSL. He described individual signs and had a
great knowledge and understanding of BSL.
Today, linguists are only rediscovering what was known earlier and had been
forgotten.
Adapted from Sign Language by J. G. Kyle and B. Woll. Cambridge University. 1985
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Thomas Braidwood began to teach deaf pupils in Scotland in 1760.
Braidwood’s was famous for teaching his pupils to speak. His method was
called The English Method or Combined Method. At Braidwood’s school they
used both sign language and speech. A man called Arnot visited the school
in 1779 and wrote:
“He begins with learning the deaf articulation or the use of their voices:
at the same time he teaches them to write the letters and make words.
He next shows them what the words mean. After this, he shows them
how to use the words in sentences.
Mr Braidwood said that the deaf have great difficulty in pronunciation,
reading and writing. They converse using signs.
When we visited the school we found that the boys not only could
converse by the help of a signed alphabet, but they understood us,
although perfect strangers to them, by the motion of our lips. “
Braidwood moved to London in 1783 and opened schools there. He also
opened schools in Edinburgh (1810) and in Birmingham (1812). Members of
Braidwood’s family ran all the schools.
Adapted from “Sign Language” by J. G. Kyle and B. Woll. Cambridge University. 1985
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In 1865 there lived an old French man in a village called
Sible Hedingham in Essex. The man was deaf and could not speak.
He made his living telling fortunes and giving advice to the local people.
The old man was attacked by Emma Smith on the 3rd August. She said he
was a witch. Soon, lots of people gathered. They dragged the old man
down to the river. They pushed him in to see if he would sink or swim.
The man managed to swim, but the next day he died.
Emma Smith was arrested and tried for murder. She said that the old
man had bewitched her!
This was the last time “witch swimming” took place in England.
BDN May 2001

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A Bizarre* Island Experiment
King James IV of Scotland was clever and quite a scholar. He got ideas from
reading Renaissance writings. He wanted to discover what the original language
of mankind was.
In 1493, King James IV placed two babies and a deaf nurse on an isolated*
island off the coast of Scotland. The island is called Inchkeith. The nurse was to
look after the children until they started to speak. The King believed that the
first words the children would say would be the language of Adam and Eve in
Eden: the language of God.
King James’ experiment was not very successful. It was unreliably reported that
the first word the Inchkeith children said was the Hebrew word for bread, but no
one believed this.
Amongst the deaf community it is agreed that a really reliable report of the
experiment would conclude that King James came close to proving that the
original language of the human race was Sign Language with a slight
Scottish accent.
Similar experiments were carried out in Sicily by King Frederick II, in Egypt by
King Psamitik and by the Emperor Akbar in India.
* Bizarre: strange * isolated: lonely

Adapted from BDN December 2001
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Deaf Fenian
Among the arrests made in Ireland after the troubles on the memorable 15th
September 1865, was that of the entire staff of The Irish People, the
newspaper for the Fenian party. One of the staff was Kickham, a leaderwriter, who was born deaf and used sign language. Kickham is a very able
writer, one of the raciest novelists Ireland has produced, and a poet of more
that average excellence.
Kickham was sentenced with James O’Connor M.P. and several others, to
twenty years imprisonment.
entire = hele
raciest = vågelig
staff = personalet
Fenian = politisk parti for Irsk selvstendighet
M.P. = politiker på stortinget
The British Deaf Monthly, 1898
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Deaf School on Former Prison Site in London.
Today, Clerkenwell in the centre of London is a nice area to live and work in.
In the past, dangerous thieves and robbers lived there. Clerkenwell inspired
Charles Dickens to write about Oliver Twist, Fagin and Mr. Pickwick. In the
crowded, dirty and shabby streets stood a terrible prison, known as the House
of Detention.
The prison was built in 1615. Prisoners were cruelly treated and every day
someone was beaten. About 10,000 people were imprisoned each year
between 1700 and 1775. Thousands were sent from the prison to America
and Australia: men, women and children. We know that the first deaf
European to arrive in Australia was a woman called Betty Steel. She was
transported from Clerkenwell to Australia for stealing bread.
The Clerkenwell prison was pulled down in 1890, but the cellars remained.
In 1892 a school for the deaf was built on the site of the prison. The school had
seven classrooms, a large hall and a kitchen. It was called the Hugh
Myddelton School and had 60 pupils. Hugh Myddelton was a rich man who
paid for London to be supplied with clean water.
The school was bombed during the war in 1943. The pupils were sent to the
Frank Barnes School, which still exists today.
Today you can visit the cellars of the old prison, which are open for tourists.
A.F. Dimmock
BDN. May 1997
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Deaf Holocaust Victims in World War II
History shows that Jewish people have suffered many tragedies. The Holocaust,
however, was the largest, single incident. Over six million people were killed, mostly
in concentration camps. Not only were Jewish people targeted by the Nazis, but deaf
people, in fact, all handicapped people, were also on the Nazis' list. The Nazis
believed that certain groups of people, including Jews and handicapped people, were
"imperfect". They wanted to create a single race that was "perfect". One method used
by the Nazis was forced sterilization.
Forced sterilizations started in the USA and other European countries in the early
1900s. It was called eugenics. The idea was to prevent the growth of “undesirable
people”, including Deaf people, by voluntary or forced sterilization. Doctors during
that time were enthusiastic about the idea of preventing the birth of "undesirable"
people.
The Nazis adopted the idea of eugenics in the 1930's and 1940's. Mentally ill people
were killed in hospitals. The definition of “undesirables” included Jews, gypsies,
homosexuals and disabled people. This led to the murder of 11 million people,
including many Deaf people and six million Jews.
It is important to note that the Deaf community in Germany at first supported the
Nazi idea. Deaf members of the Nazi party volunteered for sterilization and joined
the military organizations. In 1933 the Nazis decided that Deaf people could not be
members anymore.
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Professor Biesold
Professor Horst Biesold is German and was a teacher of the deaf. He has researched
into the fate of the deaf victims of the Nazis.
His interest began when he noticed that many people in the deaf community did not
any have children, and asked a friend about it. The friend looked anxious and sad.
He made two signs that Biesold didn't recognize. "I said, 'What's that?' and the
answer was, "Sterilized by force.”" The Professor was astonished. He had never
heard of this before. That was how he began his research.
He discovered that at least 17,000 deaf Germans had been sterilized, but that it was
kept secret. The Nazi government had told the victims "You don't speak to anyone. If
you speak to anyone about your sterilization, you have to go into the concentration
camp.... .” Biesold writes: “They are ashamed about their fate and that they can't
have children."
Biesold said he later came to realize that many of the teachers in schools for deaf
people, had been Nazis who did not want to reveal the things they had done. But
now there is a new generation in Germany, and they want to know what really
happened.
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Memorials to the Deaf in Berlin and Tel Aviv
Berlin, Germany
On a Plaque on a wall in East Berlin it says:
“This is all that remains of the Hebrew Institute for Deaf-mutes, also known as
Israelite Institute for the Deaf. Fascist bandits dragged off 146 deaf Jewish students in
1942 and murdered them:
The school’s headmaster Dr Felix Reich, along with 11 students:
Marion Schlessinger Intratof (USA)
Henni Sonntag (USA)
Horst Marchner who was the oldest at 12 years old (Germany)
Annie Marschner Senchel (UK)
Klaus Silberman (UK) Lothat Bibier, the youngest as 3 years old (UK)
Ruth Danzinger Fallman (UK)
Hans Schwartz (Israel)…….. ”
Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Holocaust Memorial for Deaf Jews was established at the Helen Keller Center in
Tel Aviv, Israel in January, 1991. Chaim Herzog, president of Israel at that time,
wrote "The erection of the "Yizkor" site in the Helen Keller Center, in memory of the
thousands of deaf Jews murdered by the Nazis, is a very important initiative to all
those who perished in this terrible Holocaust; whose noise they did not hear, but
whose blood streamed in rivers of the blood of their communities."
Now that so many years have passed, we should never forget what has taken place
and vow that it will never happen again.
From the Internett. Deaf World Web.
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Sterilization = an operation to stop people from having children
Vow = promise
reveal = talk about
murdered = killed
Tasks
Who were the Nazis? What is a concentration camp? Find out the names of some of
them.
What did deaf people in Norway experience during the war? Visit the Deaf Club and
make a videoed interview of some of the memories of the pensioners there.
Use the information from the interviews to make a home page in English on the
Internett.
Famous Deaf People
He has travelled all over the world on his own.
He can speak and sign ten different languages.
Most deaf people in South African and China know him.
He received a medal from The World Federation for the Deaf in 1999.
He is the first Usher/deafblind Roman Catholic priest in history.
His name is Father Cyril Axelrod. He is also known as Cha Man On by the
Chinese deaf people which means ”Peace for People.”
Cyril Axelrod was born deaf in 1942 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He went to
St Vincent School for the Deaf. He studied at Gallaudet University in USA. In 1966
he suddenly decided to become a priest.
“I was in a church one day and I saw some deaf people there. They didn’t
understand what was said. Then I decided to become a priest.”
Father Cyril worked with deaf people in many parts of South Africa. In 1978 he was
in Soweto. “A nurse from the hospital asked me to come as she needed help. I went
to her and I was shown into a room… It was full of black, deaf children, sitting on the
floor doing nothing. Their parents left them there at 7 a.m. and collected them at
5 p.m. The parents had to go to work. The children sat there all day doing nothing. It
was terrible! No school would take the deaf children.” So Father Cyril started a
school for deaf children in one room. The school is still there today and is now called
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the Sizwile School and has about 200 deaf pupils. (Sizwile is an African word which
means “We have heard.”)
In 1980 Father Cyril found that he was going blind. He had Usher syndrome: “I was
devastated!” But it did not stop him from working. He continued to work until he
had a dream.
“One night I had a dream that someone from China was asking for my help. I didn’t
know what it meant until 1988.” That year Father Cyril was at a meeting for priests.
They were asked if anyone would be interested in going to Macau in China. “Then I
understood my dream,” Father Cyril explains. “I asked if I could go, and I did.”
Father Cyril had to learn spoken Chinese and Chinese sign language.
In Macau, the deaf people had to beg for food. Father Cyril opened a school in 1990,
and other organisations to help the people lead independent lives.
By Nick J Sturley
Adapted from British Deaf News June 2000
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Betty Steel is the first, European, Deaf person we know about who was sent
from England to Australia in 1770.
Betty was born in the slums of London. We believe that she was arrested for
stealing bread. She was held at the terrible prisons in *Clerkenwell and Newgate
in London. Prisoners were cruelly treated and beatings were common. About
10,000 people were imprisoned at Clerkenwell each year.
At her trial, Betty was sentenced to “Transportation.” This meant that she was
sent to Australia to serve her sentence. Each year, many thousands were
transported to Australia.
Betty travelled by boat together with hundreds of other prisoners to Sydney. Life
in the prison colony was very hard.
Betty never returned to England. Her grave has recently been found in Sydney.
*Clerkenwell prison and the slums around it inspired Charles Dickens to write his book
“Oliver Twist”. The prison was pulled down in 1890 although the cellars remained. In
1892 a school for the deaf was built there. The school existed until 1943 when it was
bombed and destroyed by German planes.
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(1931 – 1993) Deaf poet.
Dorothy (Dot) Miles was born in Wales. She became deaf at the age of nine
due to *meningitis. She went to the Mary Hare Grammar School. After
finishing school, Dot tried different jobs but did not enjoy any of them. She
finally decided to study at Gallaudet College in America. It took five days to
travel from Liverpool to America by boat.
At Gallaudet Dorothy was *overwhelmed! She soon discovered that she
wanted to work in the theatre. She acted in many college *performances:
Hamlet, Othello, The Fall of Troy etc. She was given Gallaudet’s Best Actress
Award. After leaving Gallaudet, Dot started working and studying in
Washington. She, and several others, started their own theatre: The National
Theatre of the Deaf.
After many years Dot left America and returned home to England. She
worked as an actress, poet and activist for Deaf Issues. Dot hoped to start a
British National Theatre for the Deaf, and in 1974 her hopes were realised.
But in 1981 the government decided to pay ordinary theatres to use sign
language interpreters instead of funding the Deaf Theatre. Today there is no
longer a professional theatre with deaf actors.
Dorothy wrote many wonderful poems, always in BSL or ASL and in English.
Dorothy fell from a window to her death in 1993. Undoubtedly, she was the
most talented Deaf poet of the 20th century.
* meningitis=hjernehinnebetennelse *overwhelmed = overveldet *performance = forestilling
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TEXTS FROM LITERATURE ABOUT THE DEAF
An adapted excerpt
Gerasim is a deaf caretaker. He works for a rich widow in Moscow. Gerasim is inseparable
from his dog called Mumu. The widow has said that her servants can not have pets. Gerasim
has managed to hide Mumu. But one night Mumu barks and wakes up the widow. She orders
that Mumu has to be destroyed. Gerasim is allowed to carry out the order himself.
…..the door of the little room opened. Gerasim came outside. He was wearing
his best jacket and was leading Mumu by a string. Gerasim went over to the
gate. The little boys who were in the yard followed him with the eyes, in silence.
Gerasim did not turn round. He went out in the street. He crossed the road and
went into the eating-house.
In the eating-house they knew Gerasim and understood his signs. He ordered
cabbage soup with meat. He sat down at the table. Mumu stood beside his chair,
quietly looking at him with her intelligent eyes. Her coat shone. It was newly
combed. The waiter brought Gerasim the cabbage soup. Gerasim crumbled
bread into it, cut the meat up very small, and put the plate on the floor. Mumu
began to eat with her usual good manners, her snout hardly touching the food.
Gerasim looked at her for a long time. Two great tears suddenly rolled from his
eyes. One fell on the little dog’s head, the second in the soup. He covered his
face with his hands. Mumu ate up half the plateful, and licked her lips. Gerasim
got up, paid for the soup, and went out. The waiter followed him with a puzzled
glance.
Gerasim walked without hurrying. He did not let Mumu off the string. He
walked to a building site and took two bricks. Then he turned towards the
riverbank. He went to a spot where two, small boats were tied. He jumped into
one with Mumu.
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An old man came out of a hut and shouted after him. But Gerasim only nodded
his head and began to row against the stream. The old man stood there for a
while, scratched his head and limped back into the hut.
And Gerasim rowed and rowed. Now Moscow was left behind. Now he could
see gardens, fields, woods and small peasants’ huts. He felt the breath of the
country. He dropped the oars. He looked down at Mumu and remained
motionless. His powerful hands rested on her back. The boat was slowly being
carried back towards the town. At last Gerasim sat upright. Hurriedly and with a
pained anger on his face, he tied the string round the bricks. He made a noose
and put it round Mumu’s neck, lifted her over the river, looked at her for the last
time….
Trustingly and fearlessly she looked at him and wagged her tail. He turned
away, shut his eyes, and opened his hands….
When he opened his eyes again wavelets were hurrying, as before, along the
river, as if racing one another. As before they splashed and washed against the
side of the boat. Only far behind him wide circles were moving on towards the
bank.
By Ivan Segeevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883)
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The Power of Words
A group of frogs were travelling through the woods, when two of them fell into
a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit. The frogs saw how deep
the pit was and told the two frogs that they were as good as dead! The pit was so
deep they would never get out.
The two frogs ignored them and tried to jump out of the pit. The other frogs kept
telling them to stop trying and give up. They were going to die anyway.
Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave
up. He fell down dead.
The second frog continued to jump as hard as he could.
Once again the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop and just lie down and die.
The frog tried even harder and finally he jumped out of the pit.
You see, this frog was deaf. He was unable to hear the others. He thought they
were encouraging him all the time!
This story teaches us:
Language can give the power of life and death.
An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up,
and help them make it through the day.
Anon
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