Sign & Breath
Voice and the Literary Tradition
Published on 26. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
195 pages
979-8-9907678-1-2 (ISBN)
Description
Sign & Breath is a new critical anthology that takes a different approach to exploring these questions: What is poetry? What defines voice?
Featuring a range of contemporary artists, many of whom work across different mediums and genres, Sign & Breath introduces the reader to one page that sings in any genre - prose, fiction, poetry, spoken word, hybrid forms, and song - across diverse traditions. Rather than define poetry as a genre with conventions, traditions, codes, and modalities, this book features poetry as a faculty that thrums in all written and spoken art.
Readers are introduced to a text followed by a discussion with the author about creating the piece, ties to creative lineage, and the definition of voice through their practice. This anthology contributes to the dialogue among genres which will reframe understanding of poetry as an aesthetic experience of language. With one page that sings in any genre, Sign & Breath presents a new, inclusive perspective on poetry while two questions remain: Do we have a clearer understanding of what defines poetry? Do we have a clearer understanding of voice?
Featuring a range of contemporary artists, many of whom work across different mediums and genres, Sign & Breath introduces the reader to one page that sings in any genre - prose, fiction, poetry, spoken word, hybrid forms, and song - across diverse traditions. Rather than define poetry as a genre with conventions, traditions, codes, and modalities, this book features poetry as a faculty that thrums in all written and spoken art.
Readers are introduced to a text followed by a discussion with the author about creating the piece, ties to creative lineage, and the definition of voice through their practice. This anthology contributes to the dialogue among genres which will reframe understanding of poetry as an aesthetic experience of language. With one page that sings in any genre, Sign & Breath presents a new, inclusive perspective on poetry while two questions remain: Do we have a clearer understanding of what defines poetry? Do we have a clearer understanding of voice?
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 189 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
628 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-9907678-1-2 (9798990767812)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Shanta Lee is an award-winning artist, writer across genres, author, and public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that has been widely featured. Winner of the Abel Meeropol Social Justice award and a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow (New England) , "Hallowed Hunted Body" is included in, This Is How They Teach You How to Want It...The Slaughter: A Field Guide for the Hunted & the Hunter, The Dead-Alive, The Live-Dead Ones, The...(Harbor Editions, 2024). Her multimedia exhibition, Dark Goddess, which features her short film, interviews, and photography, and other items has been on view at the Fleming Museum of Art, the Southern Vermont Arts Center, and the Bennington Museum. She has an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College. Lee, author of several collections and regular contributor to Ms. Magazine and Art New England. Shanta currently teaches poetry at Wilkes University. To learn more, please visit www.shantalee.com Philip Brady's newest book is The Elsewhere: Poems & Poetics (Broadstone, 2021). He is the author of two essay collections, Phantom Signs and By Heart from the University of Tennessee Press; a book-length poem, To Banquet with the Ethiopians, a memoir, To Prove My Blood, and three previous books of poetry. He has edited a critical book on James Joyce and two anthologies of contemporary poetry.
Brady's work has received the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press; a ForeWord Magazine Gold Medal; an Ohioana Poetry Award; the Ohio Governor's Award; six Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council; and Thayer and Newhouse Fellowships from New York State. An essay earned Notable recognition in Best American Essays. He has held residencies at Yaddo, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and the Soros Centre for the Arts in the Czech Republic.
Brady has taught at University College Cork, on Semester at Sea, at the University of Ibadan, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the University of Lubumbashi in the Congo. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Youngstown State University, where he founded the YSU Poetry Center and co-founded the NEOMFA. Currently, he is Executive Director of Etruscan Press and serves on the MFA faculty of Wilkes University. For more information please visit www.philipbrady.com
Brady's work has received the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press; a ForeWord Magazine Gold Medal; an Ohioana Poetry Award; the Ohio Governor's Award; six Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council; and Thayer and Newhouse Fellowships from New York State. An essay earned Notable recognition in Best American Essays. He has held residencies at Yaddo, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and the Soros Centre for the Arts in the Czech Republic.
Brady has taught at University College Cork, on Semester at Sea, at the University of Ibadan, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the University of Lubumbashi in the Congo. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Youngstown State University, where he founded the YSU Poetry Center and co-founded the NEOMFA. Currently, he is Executive Director of Etruscan Press and serves on the MFA faculty of Wilkes University. For more information please visit www.philipbrady.com