Poetry and Sign is a project that started with the attempt of Dr. Ekin Öyken, from Istanbul University, Department of Latin Language and Literature, and the “silent artist” Levent Beşkardeş, the participation of teachers from other institutions and disciplines, artists from different branches, and the support of the Ministry of Culture. In the focus of the project there is newly developing art form that is unknown in Turkey scarcely: Sign Language Poetry.
As it is known, sign language is a visual language used not only by the deaf but also by hearing individuals who want to communicate with them, and the number of those who learn this language is increasing incrementally. However circumstances was not the same 30-40 years ago. The deaf could not learn and use sign language freely, were directed to lipreading, and could only express themselves in a limited way in a world where everything was designed for hearing individuals. Besides that was valid for many countries defined as civilized. Whenas, communicate with silent signs had been part of the nature and the culture of humankind throughout history.
It is pleasing that Turkey, which relatively has a high opinion to the education of deaf individuals since Ottoman period, is one of the countries determined to catch up alteration on this topic. But however, since there is many needs waintg to be met in fields such as health, education or law in our country, it seems that their needs to express themselves in arts such as theatre, cinema, painting or poetry is considered less important generally. Here Poetry and Sign project aims to emphasize importance of these needs that assumed secondary from the perspective of poetry, to draw attention to the poetry is not an art form based on sound as generally assumed and to make familiar deaf youth to poetry, and also hearing youth to visual sight of poetry. Thus, it is aimed to open these young people, who shared life both common and uncommon since it couldn’t be comprehended the common things, a natural, enjoyable and creative space where they will interact culturally and socially and get to know each other’s communication and artistic languages.
Sign and Poetry project was born from one of the Latin poetry classes in İstanbul University with discussions full of inspration, curiocity and questions, and with the concrete contributions of the students. It is known that in this poetry tradition, in the sense of formal representation tools, the phenomenon of sound comes to the fore through prosody and auditory images, and although the ways of using the word as a means of aesthetic expression have changed, it is known that the phenomenon of sound has a central position in most of the poetry traditions. The lesser known aspect of Ancient poetry is that, it is directly based on the visual representation and not only expressing or evoking situtations and events, including even daily objects such as eggs, axes, pan flutes, but also has examples that depict literally. If so, although the things have painted and the way they were portrayed have changed, visual poetry has existed in Western culture for thousands of years, and although it has been forgotten from time to time, by climbing over and over the high walls of sound, it reminds us that our relationship with poetry is not just about hearing. The depicturing in the poem is not just a playful manifesto. In general poems are filled with iconic renditions that mimic the real world, from shape of the letters to the length, order and position of words and the souce of these not only the imagination of poet, but also the nature of languages.
This is the where sing languge, that like any other languge is peculiar to historical time and place, but also in which visual icons much more intense than in audible languge, comes in to play. For example, even though varied signs are used in different sign languages to express the plane tree, it is common for them to imitate some of the physical features of that entity that we sense in various ways, particularly with the hands and the body. Sign language poetry is not a translation of poetry that borned by verbalizing or writing, it is a form directly poured into the sign or born in the sign. Since sign language poetry makes this language not only a tool but also an object of an artistic expression, it differentiates from other representational arts performed with sign language. Because of the language is product of a significant deaf culture, sign language poetry is also different from pantomime.
Poetry and Sign project, whose main perspectives and aims of could be summuried in this way, plans to bring together this young art with young artist candidates with particularly Levet Beşkardeş, one of the most important representatives of sign language poetry in the world, artists, students, experts and also academics working in related fields such as art history, literary criticism and translation studies, between 6-8 August 2022 at İstanbul University in the workshops to be held face to face. As a result of the applications 15 deaf and 10 hearing young people to be determined, it is aimed to make the workshops more productive with the preparatory trainings and studies that will be held online in 5 sessions of 2 hours, starting from June 11. Poems and performances, that produced within the scope of the project will be recorded and translated, is going to be published on this digital platform, in which a performance library will be established expected to be expanded, specific to Turkish sign language poetry. Since there is no requirement for hearing participants to know sign language, Turkish visual poetry or poetry samples, which shine out with an iconic rendition aspect, will also be published on the digital platform. In addition, the workshop process will be the subject of a documentary film directed by Ramin Matin. Detailed information about the workshops will be shared here soon, and participant applications can be made on the https://poesi.istanbul.edu.tr/basvuru-formu page until June 6th.
