Open Window
Open Window: Poetry and Disability Justice Featuring the Flying Words Project
Throughout the month of March, the Wick Poetry Center will host a series of community workshops and discussions centered on the poetry of an internationally renowned Deaf performing artist whose work incorporates American Sign Language, pantomime, storytelling, acting and movement. Cook’s poetry and efforts with the explore the intersection of poetry and disability justice and expand ideas about what poetry is and who it belongs to. Please contribute video or text to an interactive online community poem entitled ”&Բ;
April 7th, 2022, 7 p.m.
Room 177 (Auditorium), Schwartz Center (800 E Summit St, Kent, OH 44240).
The event is open and free to all. Registration is required with the link below.
(limit 150 people) or watch the presentation on Zoom
We request that all audience members wear a mask.
If you'd like to attend the workshop on April 8th from 11 am-2 pm, please email gmihalyi@kent.edu. Limit: 20 people.
Contribute to the Open Window community poem in English or ASL:
the Flying Words Project
“Flying Words Project has accomplished what poets have been trying to do for several centuries now; to make their poems more visual, more embodied, more alive. To witness the work of FWP is to witness a milestone in literary history.”
—Dirksen Bauman, Associate Professor, Department of ASL and Deaf Studies, Gallaudet University
FLYING WORDS PROJECT is an American Sign Language (ASL) poetry troupe comprised of Deaf Poet Peter Cook and hearing coauthor Kenny Lerner. The goal of Flying Words is probably the same as all other poets, to play with language. As luck would have it, ASL is a language of moving pictures. So Kenny and Peter juxtapose imagery you can see in creating their work.
This collaboration commenced in 1984 when Cook and Lerner began performing poetry together. They soon established a deaf poetry series in Rochester, New York which culminated in the First National ASL Literature Conference in 1992. In performance, Flying Words was asked to close out the 36th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. They have been featured at the Poetry Days Festival (Dzejas Dienas,) in Latvia, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Harvard University, The People's Poetry Gathering in NYC, Theatre de Lucernaire in Paris, and many places in between. Cook and Lerner have been the recipients of grants from the New York State Council of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Puffin Foundation and are the authors of four DVD anthologies, The Year of the Walking Dogs (1984-90), the Can't Touch Tours (1990-2003) and "Live at the Bowery Club (2007) and Flying Words Project: Live in Colorado (2014.)
