 Richard Carter is multiskilled in the field of BSL education. He currently works as BSL co-ordinator at Elmfield School for Deaf Children and Fairfield Secondary School, both in Bristol where he teaches BSL to staff and hearing children. Prior to that he was a BSL Development Officer in London, where he trained BSL tutors. He lectures on introductory training with BSL and is a specialist on the new BDA BSL curriculum and a representative for his local authority. He has recently begun to develop his public performance skills that include comedy, visual poetry and Japanese Haiku. He has travelled widely around the UK performing his poetry at Deaf events, rallies and workshops. He lectures at university departments on BSL poetry and storytelling. He runs regular workshops for adults and children on composition and performance of BSL poetry. He ran workshops at Oak Lodge School and Thomas Tallis School as part of the 'Life and Deaf' poetry project, which led to a performance with the children at Greenwich University. |
 Paul Scott's poetry demonstrates the beauty and depth of BSL. He has perfomed his poetry at international conferences held in Rotterdam, Brussels and Philadelphia, as well as all around the United Kingdom. His poetry has been produced on DVD, and his second DVD is soon to be released in collaboration with other poets. A native BSL signer, Paul taught Deaf Studies and BSL to Deaf children at Elmfield School for Deaf Children in Bristol from 1997 to 2006.
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 Donna Williams is a keen a flexible writer with varied interests, chiefly science and comedy, especially as related to disability issues, having written poetry, short plays, sketches, stories and articles. She also enjoys performing. She has been a member of Nasty Girls, an award-winning deaf/disabled women-only comedy group, for several years. This group specialises in satirical, biting humour directed at how their various disabilities are portrayed and Donna has written sketches on this theme for the group. She has also performed her poetry at various festivals, including Poetry International 2008 at the Southbank Centre in London. |
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 John Wilson is a profoundly Deaf freelance consultant working in the field of Deaf Arts and British Sign Language. He has a wide range of experience as a Deaf Arts practitioner, as a theatre and television actor, and particularly as a sign-language poet. He has devised his own work, which is well-received by the Deaf community and has worked hard to foster the talent of others. From 1992 to 2005 John was Deaf Arts Officer for Shape, an organisation promoting engagement in arts and culture across the UK by disabled, deaf and older people. Through this work, John promoted deaf arts and the work of many performing and visual deaf artists, advocating the use of BSL as the principal medium of deaf arts, and developing resources and opportunities for deaf artists. In particular John steered a project to establish a National Theatre of the Deaf, awarded Regional Arts Council funding, based on a series of summer school skills development projects, a Deaf Youth Theatre project at Sadler's Wells Theatre and master classes in Deaf Arts. He has also worked to improve the experience of deaf consumers of arts through Deaf Awareness training and high-profile projects with mainstream cultural organisations.
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 Johanna Mesch is Director of the Sign Language section of the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University where she teaches sign linguistics. She is also principal investigator on a three-year project to build a Swedish Sign Language (SSL) Corpus. Her research interests include tactile signing among deafblind people, cross-linguistic comparison of signed languages and sign-language poetry. Johanna was born in Finland, and was one of six girls who, aged 11, performed poems translated into Finnish Sign Language at the 1974 Nordic Deaf Conference. She later worked as a cameraperson and video producer and between 1983 and 1987 performed poetry, theatre and pantomime in Helsinki. From 1988-1997 she taught creative theatre to deaf children in Stockholm. She is also a visual artist.
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 German-born Kabir Kapoor, or 'Cacao' as he likes to be called, is an up-and-coming, talented poet. His beautiful, expressive and comical signed poetry performances are presented in purely visual form that both Deaf and hearing audiences can thoroughly enjoy and appreciate. Kabir has directed and produced poetry in Sign Language Shows, and has taken part in a number of successful performances both in the UK and abroad. He has also worked as a teacher, a tour guide and within the field of graphic design.
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 Dorothy ('Dot') Miles (1931-1993) was a British Deaf poet who worked both in the US and in the UK. She was born hearing in North Wales and became deaf at the age of eight. She combined her passion for English poetry with sign language, and laid the foundations for modern sign language poetry. Throughout her life, she composed her poems in English, British Sign Language, and American Sign Language. She is regarded as the pioneer of BSL poetry and her work has influenced many contemporary Deaf poets.
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