Sign Language Poetry: Scholarly Articles and Videos

The library has many databases that have ASL poetry and literature scholarly articles. However, there are a few core journals that publish the most articles related to this topic. The first three titles are video-based.
Journal of American Sign Languages and Literatures,
Deaf Studies Digital Journal,
Sign Language Studies,
Sign Language & Linguistics,
Deaf Worlds,
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
Society for American Sign Language (SASL) Journal

You can search within the journal to retrieve articles or use the databases below. Use the A-Z Journal List to find journal print and online holdings. Check out the Newsletter of the Society of American Sign Language.

Take a look at ACTION magazine, published by Jim Cohn, an alumnus (interpreter) involved in the early days of ASL Poetry. Jim Cohn established the short-lived ACTION magazine in 1984 while living in Rochester, New York. He bought an A.B. Dick mimeo machine and produced the magazine in his basement. Between 1984 and 1986, Cohn published 9 issues of ACTION, drawing upon the work of poets in the upstate New York region such as Sam Abrams, J. Todd Beers, Finvola Drury, bobby johnson, Chan McKenzie and Wendy Low, as well as poets Cohn had met in Boulder, Colorado, as a student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. ACTION also drew upon the Deaf poetry community of Rochester and was the first poetry magazine in the country to feature work by American Sign Language poets Peter Cook, Debbie A. Rennie and Patrick Graybill.