The House of the Interpreter

By Lisa Kelly

A Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation 2023. BBC Poetry Extra's Book of the Month August 2023. This, Lisa Kelly's second collection, responds to the repression of British Sign Language (BSL) as its occasion and inspiration. Kelly develops the subject through extended sequences which attend to mushrooms and fungi, lifeforms that develop in secret, unnoticed, unappreciated, yet whose existence enriches everyday life. What can such hidden others teach us – if we attune all our senses?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781800173132

Lisa Kelly

Lisa Kelly has single-sided deafness. She is also half Danish. Her first collection, A Map Towards Fluency, was published by Carcanet in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press) and Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. Her pamphlets are Philip Levine’s Good Ear (Stonewood Press) and Bloodhound (Hearing Eye). She is a regular host of poetry evenings at the Torriano Meeting House, London and is co-Chair of Magma Poetry. Lisa is co-editor of The Deaf Issue, Magma 69. She has been shortlisted four times for the Bridport Prize, longlisted for the National Poetry Competition twice and won the 2016 University of Lancaster (MA) ‘Reading’ Prize. She is currently studying British Sign Language, and her latest pamphlet, From The IKEA Back Catalogue, is published by New Walk Editions 2021.

Book preview

3

THE HOUSE

OF THE

INTERPRETER

LISA

KELLY

CARCANET POETRY

5

Contents

Title Page

I. CHAMBER

Sign Language of Home

The House of the Interpreter

Ear Trumpet, possibly used during a period of mourning, Europe, 1850–1910

Researches in Electric Telephony – A Coupling

Blackbird and Beethoven

from D/diaries: Saturday morning, lying in bed, 9th February 2019

from D/diaries: Tuesday afternoon, thinking of getting a haircut, 12th February 2019

Call an Airborne Loved One

BSL Topic Comment Structure

Michelangelo, learning BSL linguistics with flashcards on the treadmill,

The Apple of Discord

Lucky Dip for Sedna

Parallel Movement of the Hands

Encounter

Every Thursday lunchtime,

#WhereIsTheInterpreter

II. OVAL WINDOW

If my deaf ear were a mushroom

Golden Shovel after Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Mushroom to Svamp

Red Data List of Threatened British Fungi: Mainly Smuts

Stinkhorn6

Cup Fungi on the Red List

Mycology Abecedarian

Mycelium

Fungi are a Difficult Group to Create Red Lists For

Mushroom

Amanita Muscaria

Mushroom Stones

Alternate Reality

Mycelium Lampshade

Darning Mushroom

Dark Honey Fungus

For all the Dirt Eaters

Scarlett Caterpillar Club

Another Riddle

Mushroom Machine

‘Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World’

Mycology

In Search of Cowbane Rust

Watery Milkcap

III. CANAL

Watermark

A thousand thank yous for your letter

Small Talk

Woman

Life

Silent Movie

Before Lights Out

Metamorphoses: Colours, Marks and Signs

Spore Poem*

A Diptych is not a Dick Pic,

Saturn Devouring His Son7

Have you seen a tree fall?

Blue Hydrangea

Running at Dusk

Howl

from Heron

Deaf Sky, Danish Sand

A Valid Excuse

Notes and Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

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I. CHAMBER

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Sign Language of Home

Fingers are not fluent in this tips-to-tips roof as if hands in prayer

have been prised apart leaving finger-pads to take fingerprints –

a tentative tent, but this temporary refuge is signed by a sharp-angled

collapse, allowing unfamiliar air and absence to intervene.

What of my Danish hjem, not at home on my tongue or in my hands?

A basic beginning in tegnsprog makes my right hand dive for shelter

under the welcoming curve of my left, fingers finding freedom,

venturing for air, only when they feel the warmth of flesh.

Is this what it is like for us all? Always having to relearn home

with a strange tongue and alien hands, prepared to open our mouths

as if to beg, to touch tongue-tip with fingertip to reveal ourselves?

This tunge signs almost the same in my native sign.

This tongue sounds almost the same in my estranged mother tunge,

if it does not fall on my deaf ear, if we can look to a gesture of home.

12

The House of the Interpreter

1.

In the House of the Interpreter, the telephone is king.

In the House of the Interpreter, the telephone can ring

at any time.

Hello, this is your Audiologist.

Hello, this is your Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist.

Hello, this is God with his wishlist.

In the House of the Interpreter, there is an ur-telephone,

an early telephone, made by an ‘experimenter’.

I thought of that word,

the different materials experimenters experiment with

and the different people experimenters experiment on.

Er, sorry, the receiver is on my deaf ear.

Er, sorry, I do not want an operation, but I know as my consultant,

you are not going to consult me. I am seven years old.

Er, sorry, I have nothing to confess that you would wish to hear.

2.

In the House of the Interpreter,

the ur-telephone is made of materials:

copper (alloy), metal (unknown) and wood (unidentified).

In the House of the Interpreter,

calls are unanswered and connections are missed.

Allies are unknown and unidentified.13

3.

In the House of the Interpreter, there is a stained-glass window

above a pair of Bell telephones, and scratched on the stone lintel:

‘Saint John of Beverley

Patron Saint of Deaf people’

You hold a