Chloe Yelena Miller’s second full-length poetry collection, Perforated, is about the grief of private and public losses. Architecture and light frame loss through the lens of motherhood, mortality and love from the United States to Italy. Covid, immigration, climate change and school shootings sound alarms in Perforated. Woven through the collection is “New York City,” a long poem broken into smaller pieces reflecting on 9/11 as it continues to reverberate in the author’s life. Public events transform into private experiences as the narrator searches for strength. English and Italian Vocabulary poems, a series that began in Miller’s first book, Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books 2021) and chapbook, Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013) explore how language can structure emotions. In “English Vocabulary: To Mourn,” Miller asks, “What if mourning is my engine?” She remembers relatives and loved ones who have died, working to undo mortality through memory. Miller reflects on her family’s Italian origins and her time in Italy. As the final poem, “Palimpsest," offers, we can make our worlds visible through art and light as we build upon the past. We are mortal and fragile, but we can remember each other and persist.

Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her family. She is the author of Perforated (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026), Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College (poetry) and a BA from Smith College (Italian language and literature). She has received residencies from Bread Loaf, A Room of Her Own and Vermont Studio Center and has received three DC Arts and Humanities grants for her writing.

Miller is in conversation with Rose Solari, the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Last Girl, Orpheus in the Park, and Difficult Weather; the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere, in which she also performed; and a novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing; the University of Maryland, College Park; St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland; and The Centre for Creative Writing at Oxford University in Oxford, England. In 2010, she co-founded Alan Squire Publishing, an independent literary press.

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