Quill of the Goddess
Latest Release
Are you going through perimenopause or menopause? Do you feel like no one understands what this major life transition is really like?
This poetry collection is for you, the woman passing over the threshold into her most powerful era. It is for you, awake at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat from your fluctuating hormones. It is for you, visionary and creatress, who has already done so much and still dreams of more. It is for you, the emerging crone, who will not be written off or sidelined by the patriarchy.
Best known as the voice behind Quill of the Goddess on social media, Jen Miller offers a vulnerable, relatable, empowering exploration of "the change."
What Readers are Saying
Riding to the Woods with Jen, A Reader's Journey into Her Poetry
Review by Francesca Aniballi, PhD, author of Fairy Wisdom for Daily Life
​
Jennifer Miller’s new collection of poems Mosaic speaks in a grounded, earthy voice, while galloping like a wild, untamed horse in the vast landscapes of the imagination. In her midlife, Jennifer learns to make art and beauty out of pieces and shards. She follows the ‘coriaceous crone’ through the uncertainties this time has in store, relaxing ‘into the web of Grandmother Spider’ weaving ‘the next strand’ of her life.
Step by step, poem after poem, Jennifer leads me through an intense, savage journey full of revelations.
I ask with her Lilith ‘what I will conceive’ once I return to the same garden ‘but I’m a different me?’ I see all the stages of my life as I stand ‘as a Mesa’. Jennifer writes about breast lumps, stories, and the moon, as well as ‘the cold steel of a mammograph plate’, and memories of her mother with rare honesty and clarity.
All the poems have a strong visual power, like pictures with clean contours and broad areas of well-defined color.
I can see why she is a moth, not a butterfly: she is drawn to the fire, the raw center of life. And after burning, she undergoes transformation.
At fifty, she experiences herself as an ‘uncultivated’ wild rose, needing no ‘fuss’. And in coming to this place of self-recognition, she is fierce enough to protect ‘delicate buds’ in younger women.
And with Jennifer, I don’t take the straight path, but ‘saunter’ into ‘the side trail’ to ‘be awed by this world.’
Growing young like wise Merlin, this poet-woman, who never felt ‘this yearning to grow a new life’ is a ‘feral creature’ ‘only the wild ones and the outcasts’ among us can ever hope to find. And together, we make tea, and we make time, and we heal – because ‘wisdom follows experience’ and requires leaning ‘into the mystery’ without asking why.
Cerridwen, Baba Yaga, Lilith, and Grandmother Spider take on flesh and bones in Jennifer’s poems. By dropping all the trappings, she discovers the Land as her teacher. Mountains, marshes, and plains, all shaped her with their specific lessons. Believe is ‘the only rule.’ Water, air, fire, and earth are all it takes to sustain life. And the wild woman in us comes out of ‘forgotten places’, ‘with moss in her hair.’ When it is time to exit, I know ‘I’ll take myself out into the woods,’ with Jen.
