Stroking Cerberus

The living have always told themselves stories about the dead, but few of us stop to wonder if the dead ever tell tales of the living. Through the prism of Haskell’s identity as a deaf poet come the themes of communication—or miscommunication—across worlds, languages and between the living and the dead. Mythical dogs, the dead who mourn the living, and the sorrow of those reincarnated, join hands around Jacqueline Haskell’s unique and very personal poetic Ouija board to resonate with the living, the dead and all those in-between. As forcible as they are humorous, these are poignant and thought-provoking poems. Drawing inspiration from electronic voice phenomena, near-death experiences and apophenia, Jacqueline Haskell delves into the world of the occult to find life after death. From documented attempts to capture voices from ‘the Beyond’, to the classic stories of mythology, to her own incredibly moving experiences of loss, these poems celebrate life on the divide, and everything in between—as forcible as they are humorous, as poignant as they are thought-provoking.