A chance to explore what a mother language means to participants beyond spoken fluency.

Additional information

Access info: We aim to ensure this event is accessible – please contact us with any queries. Maximum of 15 spaces – please reserve your space using the ticket link below.

Who’s involved:

Lisa Kelly is a poet and editor with single-sided deafness and is half Danish. Her second collection The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet) was a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation in 2023, and her first collection A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet) was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, 2021.

Louise Adkins is an artist working across photography, text, and drawing. Her practice explores the intersection between performance and the documentation of historical events. She often works with collections, archives, libraries, and heritage sites.

Melissa Tanti is a Research Fellow at Coventry University. Her book, The Translating Subject (March 2025), explores the queer, feminist, transnational, and decolonizing potentials in multilingual experimental texts. She co-creates research projects that enable communities to tell their stories in innovative and creative ways.

Cathy Soreny is a transdisciplinary creative researcher working across filmmaking, nursing and disability. Her PhD research project Stories Beyond Words is exploring co-created approaches to filming and representing communication disabilities.

About Disinfluencies Co-Lab:

A production of the Disfluencies Co-Lab: a creative collective of people who are Deaf, stammer, use communication devices, speak marginalised/threatened languages, are neurodiverse,and more. We are united by a vision and passion to challenge societal norms that have grown from unquestioned expectations of speech fluency. We see value and pride in diversity, and seek creative, radically accessible ways to explore and develop approaches to shift these expectations. Together we aim to expand thinking around linguistic diversity to embrace marginalised vocal differences, multilingualism, and forms of non-normative communication.

Co-Lab Founding Members:Louise Adkins; Derek E. Daniels; Conor Foran; Emily Fox; Lisa Kelly; lisa luxx; Julie (Mack)McNamara; Jamie Preece; Peyvand Sadeghian; Cathy Soreny; Joshua St. Pierre; Emma Sullivan; Melissa Tanti