Colly Metcalfe has a poem, Coffee Shop, in What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective

She is a deaf writer and performer from Teesside.

She has a long history of performance in mainstream and disability theatre and has performed at festivals, outdoor site specific productions, radio and music videos.

After joining a poetry writing group (Tees Women Poets), Colly started to explore writing her own narrative as a deaf woman.  She writes with performance in mind and delivers in a mix of spoken English and BSL, using sound, music and movement to convey meaning.  Colly is a relatively new writer, having been writing for only 3 years, but has so far had one poem published by Slice of the Moon Publications in 2020, as well as a few things online for Disability Arts Online and D4D, Disconsortia and some signed singing music collaborations. In 2020, Colly participated in an online series of writing workshops for deaf and disabled writers, with Spread the Word – the Experimental! series which had full accessibility.   This was the beginning of Colly’s writing journey.

At present, she is thoroughly enjoying participating in Un/Natural series of workshops led by Elspeth Wilson, also online.  Un/Natural is for deaf and disabled writers and is again fully accessible, which has opened up a whole new world of potential inspiration.  The Experimental! series gave Colly the courage to apply for Arachne’s callout for participants for this Anthology – and she could not be more thrilled to have been chosen.  Her writing journey continues.