The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

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performance poet, who is performing for a hearing audience for the first time. Of course my first film
being about poetry, it made sense for there to be storytelling across different platforms. That was always
conceived of ‘okay, there’s this short film, I can see the benefit, especially in the literary community, of
making sure that hearing poets and writers are partnering with deaf poets and writers and introducing
the idea of having ASL interpreters at readings and performances so we can be more inclusive in that way.’
Also, it had a third component, well it kind of turned into four components. You have the short film. You
have ASL interpreters at readings and not how we’re accustomed to seeing it in the American theater
where the sign language interpreter is down stage right and off the stage and away from the action that’s
happening. Just trying to re-invent what that might be if we had more inclusive live experiences. It was
also visiting schools, sharing the film, doing residencies and educational workshops with young students
and not-so-young students, college students as well. And the final component was a poetry anthology that
had the work of deaf and hearing poets that I edited, as well as fine art.
Over the years it’s just sort of my M.O. as someone who dabbles in so many different art forms. It’s very
surreal in 2020 seeing what’s happened with Covid and the extent to which everything has had to move to
virtual spaces or the idea that we’re telling stories in hybrid ways now. This is something I was dabbling in
like ten years ago. So it’s kind of cool to have a project of this scale be able to rise to this moment. With
Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, even before the film finally came out, I had been doing artist’s
residencies, educational touring, talking about these issues, talking about the desegregation of college
football at colleges and high schools, a group of elementary school students were able to come out and see
the film. I worked in collaboration with a
couple of photographers here in the Twin
Cities, Tom Baker and Hannah Foslin on a
huge project with Hennepin Theater Trust
when the Super Bowl was here. On Mayo
Clinic Square, we had huge portraits, like
huge 40-foot portraits of my dad, Carl
Eller, Justice Page, along with quotes from
the film. That was a big opportunity to
have this storytelling in a public arts
format, or in an urban art gallery so to
speak, to just cover the side of a giant
building in downtown Minneapolis with
these ideas and these topics.
By the time an opportunity came to develop a literary component (to this story), maybe it was something
that was in the back of my mind, but at the time I was just trying to continue to get the feature film out.
Interestingly enough, the acquiring editor at Little A is a colleague and friend of mine, a poet named
Hafizah Geter. In 2011, when my family attended my dad’s induction to the College Football Hall of Fame
at the Waldorf Astoria, Hafizah kindly babysat my nieces in the hotel room above the ballroom where we
were all attending the banquet. She had sort of been following me, following this story, at a time when I
was not even aware that 10 years later I’d still be trying to tell this story. She approached me, maybe in the
spring of 2018, and had been looking for manuscripts and reaching out to her network.
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