All My Ghosts Were Well Read

Description

All My Ghosts Were Well Read is a poetry collection for anyone who has ever finished a book but failed to leave its characters behind. Here, literature has a peculiar habit of coming back to life. Frankenstein’s creature wishes to be understood rather than feared, Medea has a few things to say about the history of her reputation, Hercules discovers that strength is a rather useless weapon against grief, and the women of literature begin questioning the silences they were expected to inherit.

Moving through mythology, tragedy, gothic fiction, and the complicated geography of human emotions, Swarnika revisits familiar literary worlds with a distinctly personal imagination. These poems are neither conventional retellings nor attempts to give old stories happier endings. Instead, they enter the uncomfortable spaces their characters continue to inhabit, exploring abandonment, desire, violence, memory, womanhood, resistance, and the peculiar business of being human.