Fans of Carolyn
Srygley-Moore already questioning her mere mortality no doubt had more reasons
to believe in her superhero status in September, as she began posting
impressive pencil works even as she expanded her posting of shorter fragmentary
poetic works. If we assemble the text
and visual jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered over Facebook pages, a fairly
coherent picture emerges. Nevertheless,
I chased Carolyn down to find out if she sees the same complex Mandelbrot patterns
in her memories that seem to be left in her wake, bread crumbs for the lost
children.
Many people who
suffer significant trauma in childhood years, or in post-college crashes,
preserve blank pages in the internal mental narrative, if only as a form of
self-preservation. Srygley-Moore will
have none of that. Extended hospital
trips might leave hazy vapor trails at times, but the life story linearity is
there, just under the surface.
Experiencing the violence of a father who lived through World War 2
atrocities did not cancel out the memories of older brothers and treehouses
during childhood, nor the images of a kind mother who remained an ally to the
present day. CSM said she even has clear
memories of first finding her visual-arts voice at age 7, though after five
years of drawing and painting in her younger childhood, she gave it up at
adolescence. She returned through later
teen years, but abandoned art at 18 when she discovered her intense love for
language, and did not return to the voice of the charcoal and colored pencil drawing
until the 21st century.
“I started visual art again because I looked
through a magazine my poetry was published in, and realized the visual art
published there was something I was capable of doing,” she said. “I went from there, and verbally contracted
with A Razor, the editor/publisher of
my upcoming book on the Miracle series of poems, to do the cover of the
book. It was baby steps from there. I bought a sketchbook, charcoal, and colored
pencil, and went at it. It feeds into my
writing, very much so. It is a more
relaxed form of art, for me, and I just have an absolute blast going after the
mix of dream and realism that comes to me.”
Srygley-Moore’s poems carry the most bite
when she addresses the betrayal of family and others, because she considers the
transgression of trust a critical issue.
She often asks herself, would the perpetrator of violence, the betrayer
of trust, act the same if forced to confront the long-term effects on victims
and others of the violent act? At the
same time, there are no blank pages allowed in the processing of memory. Does that bring an element of catharsis to
her poetry? She said that her work is
achieved under a conscious discipline that leaves pure catharsis “a little
strained.”
Recent fragment-poems have arisen in order
to accommodate the need to write while at work, since a longer form would be
too difficult to bring to fruition, while her own handwriting, Srygley-Moore
said, is illegible. Because the
fragments are delivered directly online, they have attracted the attention of
outsiders, including online publishers Bone Orchard, and Srygley-Moore’s friend
Lee Tromboudin, who would like to set some of the fragments to music.
Seeing the audience grow for art and
fragmentary poems, as well as her more traditional work, has left Srygley-Moore
feeling more confident that she is expanding the definition of translator. More and more fans seem to expect a daily
poem or two with their morning coffee, which helps drive a sense of obligation
to a fervent, if modest, fan base.
Broadening her
genres and base of expression has made Srygley-Moore a happier person, she
freely admitted. The addition of visual
art in recent months "opens apertures, wormholes, distances that otherwise are inaccessible," she said. "I believe that to show how far I have come, in various avenues as a woman with bipolar disorder, who has managed to overcome PTSD, is something good for those still stuck in the trenches.”
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