"Kirsten Hemmy's remarkable book of poems, The Atrocity of Water, reaches us in the deep places of the heart where only a poem can go, where the reader will 'want to know what survives us.' These are wise poems that penetrate the mind with their brutal honesty. Again and again, we are broken and mended and again broken because ours is a world 'built on enslaved sweat, ' a world where 'all the tragedies of the world are a silence.' This book is the voice of thousands who cannot tell their own stories. Kirsten is a brave poet, seeking to restore to us that world that was lost, a world she has seen not only in her dreams. These powerful poems are urgently relevant." - Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, author of Where the Road Turns