Watching the Potomac Burn

'Throughout this new collection you will find C Leigh Srygley in firm control as each poem challenges us with complexity in form, rhythm, and content. What we may have considered the commonplace - matchbox toys, dolls, bicycles, bridges, house chores, sea shells, etc are used to bring us to an unavoidable truth - that now war, violence and terror have become the commonplace of our every day. C Leigh Srygley brings us to these conclusions over and over again through their firm control of context and form. With each read there is something new revealed, something proving that it was futile to think we could anticipate the next twist in the tale. These are poems to be savoured and enjoyed for their composition, while the content makes us realise that C Leigh Srygley’s dedication 'to all resistance to tyranny and to those now living in a state of terror.' is in some way applicable to us all.C Leigh Srygley: The only writer I know who can hang your tongue on barbed wire and have you wanting more.'- PD Lyons winner 2019 erbacce-press International Poetry Prize.'The work of Carolyn Srygley-Moore (a.k.a. C Leigh Srygley) is always essential, unique and revelatory, touching on the things that need to be touched on with a deft hand and a keen observational aptitude. Though I have been a fan of her poetry for many years, I consider this new book, an emotionally powerful poem sequence written in response to the current moral and humanitarian tragedy in Ukraine, her best yet. I heartily recommend it.' -John Burroughs, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate and author of Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems.'Fans who’ve followed Carolyn Srygley-Moore know she was made for these times. It wasn’t just her previous accuracy of describing battlefields from World Wars I and II and the intervening follies we never seemed to leave. It wasn’t just her fearless gaze that never turns away, even as modern media warn of microtriggers, clucking like a mother hen for viewers to stop with the Looky-Lou rubbernecking. It wasn’t just her ability to channel the language of prophets, often with a brevity and directness that stops time. Many of Carolyn Srygley-Moore’s previous poetry collections have demanded of the reader a fearlessness that is often hard for mere mortals to muster. The Ukraine collection, however, is much more. While some poets shudder at topical poetry, worried that the sell-by date for poems to age well will pass very soon and that the righteous anger at injustice will become forced, Srygley-Moore naturally avoids this through her unique powers of observation. She strips the gauze away and slaps us awake from our Long Covid. We are there, shuffling papers in Kyiv. We see Thor’s Hammer in the ascendance, apogee, and perigee of flight, we feel the blow without benefit of noise-cancellation headphones, we feel the aftershocks throb to our marrow. As peace talks stumble on oblivious to every new atrocity, little moles are popping up elsewhere on the rapidly deteriorating game board. Don’t worry, Carolyn Srygley-Moore will stick around to document the aftermath. But she will also play the omniscient prophet, on the scene in time to watch every hammer fall.' -Loring Wirbel, 'Parables of Famous Economists'