The British Deaf Association (BDA) is proud to announce the winner of their second annual BSL (British Sign Language) Poet Laureate competition.
The 2024 BSL Poet Laureate is Ismael Mansoor, who wins the coveted role, along with a £500 prize and the opportunity to perform on the Poetry and Words Stage at Glastonbury 2024. The two runners-up are Sandra Duguid and Sahera Khan, winning £200 and £100 respectively.
Mansoor will be supported by the BDA to create poetic works in BSL around the campaign BSL in Our Hands, which advocates for free access to BSL for all deaf children and their families/carers. He will remain in post until the next National BSL Day on 28 April 2025.
Last year, the BDA launched the first ever BSL Poet Laureate Competition, to mark the UK’s first National BSL Day honouring the historic date on which BSL was first recognised in law as an indigenous language of Great Britain, with the British Sign Language (BSL) Act 2022. The coveted award was presented to Kabir Kapoor from London last year.
Deaf BSL signers 18+ from across the country were invited to submit a 2-minute video clip of original poetry in BSL. Entries were judged on the fluency and creativity of the language, the content and originality of the poem, and the confidence of the performance.
The judging panel was made up of seven well-known Deaf creatives: Benjamin Gorman (BSL translator), Donna Mullings (actor), Nadia Nadarajah (actor), Stephen Collins (actor), Dr Dai O’Brien (Associate Professor in BSL and Deaf Studies, York St John University), and Jean St Clair (actor and poet).
The competition was generously sponsored by DeafZone, an organisation that provides BSL interpretation, free BSL and Deaf Awareness classes, and BSL poetry performances at the Glastonbury Festival.
Rebecca Mansell, Chief Executive of the British Deaf Association, said:
“We are thrilled to be hosting the BSL Poet Laureate for a second year. The excitement and passion around the competition has been a joy to see, and I’m excited to see it continue to grow for many years to come.
Congratulations to our 2024 Poet Laureate Ismael Mansoor! The creativity that you brought to your BSL poetry really impressed the judges. The expressions that you gave from your own imagination were very strong and captivating.
Sandra Duguid came in second with a beautiful and passionate poem about BSL, repetitive with the message “Yours, Mine, Theirs”.
And in third was Sahera Khan, creating a lovely BSL poem of repetition and rhyme, which really moved the judges.
The mission of the British Deaf Association is to promote, protect and preserve British Sign Language, and one way we can do this is by sharing and celebrating our unique visual language and culture with the nation.
We can’t wait to show the nation that British Sign Language is a rich, expressive, visual language that can do anything English can – and more!”
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