Donna Williams

Donna Williams is an English poet, writer, and consultant based in Bristol. She is Deaf and a British Sign Language (BSL) user, and considers herself bicultural — having grown up in the hearing world attending mainstream schools before discovering the Deaf community later in life. She studied at the University of Central Lancashire, where she joined the deaf student community, learned BSL, and graduated in 2006 as a fluent signer.

Williams composes poetry in both English and BSL, and her bilingual practice has inspired a deep interest in translation and accessibility for signing and non-signing audiences alike. She has performed at venues and festivals across the UK — including the Edinburgh Fringe, the Royal Albert Hall (where she composed poems in response to pieces by the BBC Orchestra of Wales), and the Barbican — as well as in the US and Brazil. Her published work appears in the anthology Stairs and Whispers: Deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back and in Magma magazine (issue 69). Her poems range across themes of bilingualism, identity, and everyday life.