A Woman in Four Parts, by Kelly Miller

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

A Woman in Four Parts is a poetry chapbook that explores the deepest parts of a woman’s identity, categorized by vital organs of the body: The Gut, The Lungs, The Heart, and The Mind. Each section details the wide array of conflicting emotions attached to human experience as a child is thrust into womanhood. Within those segments, poems reflect on individual experiences while working with the others to create a mosaic of truth intent to arrive at the destination of acceptance and self-love. A Woman in Four Parts means, above all else, to allow the release of emotions we carry within us and deeply move the soul while recognizing our connections to nature, each other, and our past.

Created from blood, sweat, and lots of tears, the chapbook started as an undergrad assignment. The mission was simple: write a poetry collection that embodies the emotions and experiences that create us and drive our choices. Our pasts don’t define us, but they do change us. Through several revisions and meltdowns, this collection morphed into something else again and again and again. Even the final version seems to shift perspective before the readers’ eyes; a living, breathing poetic being, birthed “in the wood/among the petrichor/and the folly of a foolish man” on the first page.

Leaving home is never easy, but what is ‘home’ if not the place our souls are born? Can we ever really leave something that is such a huge part of us? These questions, and more about the formation of identity and the chrysalis we go through many times throughout our lives, are asked and contemplated over this series of wild words. A journey inward that some may find not linear, but cyclical.

Kelly Miller writes poetry that feeds the soul. Her first poems emerged in early childhood from an inability to understand and communicate her feelings properly, a process she still employs today. During the pandemic, she used her coping mechanism to take writing a step further and penned her first book, a memoir detailing the trauma of escaping her abusive marriage. She never published it, but it propelled her writing journey forward and helped her realize her true dream—connecting with people through emotional stories. You can find her work published in The Magic of Us, a Moms Who Write poetry anthology, and her essay “In Another Place and Time” made the short list for Women on Writing’s Worldwide Q2 NF Essay Contest in 2023. Each of her poems aim to take a vulnerable, raw, and honest look at the world today and incite an appreciation for the art of poetry. While working and raising four kids, she earned a B.A in English with a degree in Creative Writing and double minor in Professional Writing and Communications at SNHU. She is an outspoken advocate for neurodivergent minds, a champion for compassion, and an avid lover of Vincent van Gogh. She lives with her fiancée and children in upstate New York, but her heart will always belong to the dirt roads in Texas that raised her.