On September 18, 6:30 pm EDT, Shanta Lee and Philip Brady, the editors of Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition, will be celebrating the launch of their new anthology with a reading featuring their Sign & Breath Authors. Featured authors will include Tim Seibles, Rita Banerjee, Diana Whitney, Ru Freeman, Diane Raptosh, Philip Metres, Haleh Gafori, Claire Bateman, Carolyn Finney, and Bruce Smith. Please register on Zoom to attend the reading at 6:30 pm EDT.
Rita Banerjee will be reading from her flash essay “The Spirit Door” during the Sign & Breath Reading Launch.
Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition 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?
Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition debuted on August 26, 2025. You can order Sign & Breath here and read Rita Banerjee’s personal flash essay “The Spirit Door” and interview, which are featured in the anthology.
Rita Banerjee 