and was a flower by Aracelis Girmay is a delicate, limited-edition chapbook published through the Center for Book Arts in collaboration with book-artist Valentina Améstica and printed in the CBA studio. The work explores themes of ephemerality, memory, and the thresholds between visibility and disappearance, using the image of the flower as a central motif of transience and resilience. In the chapbook’s tactile form the poem is embodied: letterpress impressions, risograph overlays, and hand-sewn binding invite the reader into a slow, careful engagement with both text and object. Through its careful materiality and lyrical slant, and was a flower reinforces Girmay’s long-standing interest in how poetry can “crystallize” human experience—drawing attention to what is fleeting, what remains, and what blooms in spite of unseen forces.
Chapbook designed and printed by Valentina Améstica at Center for Book Arts in honor of the 2023 Poetry Chapbook Contest, for which aracelis girmay was the judge. Edition of 100. spirals were produced in Chile by Joaquin Martínez.