My most recent collection, Son of a Bird, a Memoir in Prose Poems, was published in April, and I am still recovering from the publication. I know that sounds weird, but I always feel lost after one of my books comes out. My mind empties, and my confidence abandons me. When I sit down to write, wondering, what next, I find I can’t remember how to write at all. And so, I do something else, anything else: clean the fridge, take a hike, train the dog, paint a room. But I hate not writing. It makes me feel anxious, purposeless. As if a part of my soul has detached itself from my body and is drifting above me like a cloud.
But of course, this is not the first time I’ve had this experience. I have learned that a few things can help. One is reading other poets, listening closely to their words, thinking about how they write and why. I often wonder what other poets go through when writing. What is their process? How do they deal with what I call the distance between what is in the mind and what happens on the page? That’s why I’m so excited about a new anthology, Sign and Breath, just out from Etruscan Press, edited by Shanta Lee and Philip Brady, in which the poets selected a poem and then discussed it with the editors. I thought I’d ask Shanta Lee a few questions about this anthology.
Nin Andrews: What inspired Sign and Breath? How did this anthology come about?
Shanta Lee: Sign and Breath began as Philip Brady's brainchild in an exploration of defining what we mean by "voice" and clarifying the definition of "poetry." In this anthology, we have brought together artists of diverse genres, approaches, and traditions, to explore an idea of poetry that goes beyond traditional poetic conventions to reveal the impulse behind the making and effects of rhythmic utterance. By conducting and recording readings and interviews with each of our contributors, we feature the dual nature of poetry, and all writing —both “Sign” and “Breath."
Shanta Lee: I officially came on board as co-editor in late 2021. I approached Phil about a project, and surprisingly, he said he was going to reach out to me to come on board and co-edit Sign & Breath. I was so fascinated, especially with the idea of asking writers to choose the one page that sings across their work. I was also interested in expanding this main question (along with other questions that we posed) to artists across mediums, writers across genres, etc.
It is an interesting question for any creative, writer, etc. to think about, so we will end with posing this question to your readers: Imagine if you had to choose the one page that sings among all of your work (written or otherwise). What would that look like for you?
Nin Andrews: How is this anthology different from others?
We have talked about this in different ways behind the scenes, especially in thinking about how we would approach a diverse range of individuals and get them excited about participating.What sets the work apart are three main features of this anthology:Shanta Lee: We offer a new approach to the discussion of prose, poetry, and other forms of writing. The reader will experience a poem or prose piece, the "one page that sings" chosen by the artist/writer in addition to reading about the writer’s approach to their work. One of our contributors stated that this was very much a project that brings everyone "behind the creation" kind of like that old MTV series, Behind the Music.
Going beyond the literary canon. This anthology extends an invitation for us all to think about how we define what we have christened as "the canon" (and we all have had some experience with it right? Whether it was high school required reading to our engagement with literature in college). As an artist who works across different mediums and genres, I always enjoy exploring what breaks a canon while acknowledging it. Sign & Breath does a great job of inviting this exploration, critique, and expansion of how we define what canon is when it comes to writing.Shanta Lee: There are a range of audiences who will enjoy this work. Sign & Breath is great for the literary connoisseur to the student to anyone in between. So, everyone from the literary nerd who appreciates learning about what is behind written work to the student exploring the boundaries of genre will be able to enjoy this anthology. Sign & Breath is also a great tool in any classroom (we have free study guides on Etruscanpress.org).This is all in addition to the range of national and international writers and artists across genres.
Nin Andrews: Can you share a poem from the anthology and an excerpt from the author’s commentary on the poem?
Mystique Academy by Claire Bateman
The first thing they taught us is that hair isn’t dead.
An exotic state of matter, it’s composed primarily of discontinuities, retracting at an average rate of a quarter-inch a month.
We learned that a child may become tearful or agitated on the occasion of her first hairlengthening, and how to distract her.
We learned to identify and respond to the singular tone each follicle emits as we chanted out the strands.
We committed to memory the esoteric names of the various knots, tangles, and convolutions we’d encounter.
We were examined on the circumstances under which the separate emptiness of those knots’ vital cores might, without our intervention, first stellify and then opacify into spinning inversions.
We were tested in dim rooms and assessed in harrowing glare; we were questioned underwater and evaluated in our sleep.
And don’t we now tremble at our stations, wielding the sacred torches on behalf of those whose hair is finally long enough for apotheosis?
There’s nothing more paradoxical than our work—red burns the slowest, then blonde, then brown.
But black goes up in a flash, as though darkness excites the flame.
EXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW :
Philip Brady: Tell us about this page. Why did you choose it? How does it represent your practice?
Claire Bateman: In both reading and writing, I’m drawn to inclusive, expansive poems with sprawling lines; that territory is this piece’s natural habitat.
Though I wrote for decades from versions of the “lyric I,” lately I’ve found myself writing from collective voices with their tonal surges and undercurrents, so this piece is more connected to my recent practice than others I could have chosen, even ones that might be even more expressively melodic. And this poem has an intimate, incantatory quality evocative of trance (I envision the hair salon academy students as a kind of mystic sisterhood) while at the same time it plays with the terminology of quantum physics and engages with the mundane as it inverts a cultural rite of passage and mythologizes the trappings of daily life (haircuts, fretful children, the exigencies of vocational training); I think that the tension between the scientific, the esoteric, and the ordinary complicates voice and tone, creating simultaneous disorientation and a sense of the familiar. I’m energized by that kind of complication.
Philip Brady: How does orality, or voice, play a role in composition?
Claire Bateman: My journal pages are filled with two kinds of fragments:
- phrases that come to me through a kind of voice (not an audible voice, but something like the inner voice that, for instance, quietly speaks a name or a word I’ve been trying to recall).
- mental images or image-clusters waiting to be described/unpacked. The journal itself is usually on the large side to provide lot of space for voice and ideas to roam around and get lost in; the one I’ve got now is 12.5-x-10.75-inches with 600 pages—It’s so heavy you could probably kill someone with it, which is a bit of a problem for portability, but I’ve become quite attached to it.
Part of my process has to do with creating connections between these audible and visual fragments/extrapolations.
Claire Bateman is the author of ten collections of poetry/prose poetry/fiction/flash fiction, most recently, The Pillow Museum (FC2), Wonders of the Invisible World (42 Miles Press, 2023) and Scape (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2016). She has received two Pushcart awards and a NEA grant and is the Poetry Editor of Hubris. She is also a visual artist. “Mystique Academy” was first published in the Bacopa Literary Review and appears in Wonders of the Invisible World.