CAIRO: the undelivered letters by Mai Serhan, winner of Center for Book Arts 2022 Chapbook Competition, is an epistolary collection that transforms the act of correspondence into both poetic and physical architecture. Designed and letterpress printed by Rhonda Khalifeh, the chapbook carries the quiet authority of the handmade: delicate paper that holds deep impressions of type, thread-sewn binding that reveals the rhythm of the poet’s line, and subtle folds that echo the private gesture of opening a letter. Within these folded structures, Serhan’s poems take shape as unsent messages—dispatches from Cairo’s rooftops, kitchens, and midnight streets—addressed to an editor who never replies. Each page feels like an artifact of intimacy, both personal and political, its physical construction underscoring the book’s themes of transmission and silence. To hold CAIRO: the undelivered letters is to participate in its unfolding: as the reader opens, reveals, and reads, the book itself performs the act of delivering what was once undelivered.
Softcover chapbook
Pamphlet stich binding
Letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press
Dimensions: 5” x 8”
Edition of 100
Center for Book Arts
CAIRO: the undelivered letters by Mai Serhan, winner of Center for Book Arts 2022 Chapbook Competition, is an epistolary collection that transforms the act of correspondence into both poetic and physical architecture. Designed and letterpress printed by Rhonda Khalifeh, the chapbook carries the quiet authority of the handmade: delicate paper that holds deep impressions of type, thread-sewn binding that reveals the rhythm of the poet’s line, and subtle folds that echo the private gesture of opening a letter. Within these folded structures, Serhan’s poems take shape as unsent messages—dispatches from Cairo’s rooftops, kitchens, and midnight streets—addressed to an editor who never replies. Each page feels like an artifact of intimacy, both personal and political, its physical construction underscoring the book’s themes of transmission and silence. To hold CAIRO: the undelivered letters is to participate in its unfolding: as the reader opens, reveals, and reads, the book itself performs the act of delivering what was once undelivered.
Softcover chapbook
Pamphlet stich binding
Letterpress printed on a Vandercook proofing press
Dimensions: 5” x 8”
Edition of 100
Center for Book Arts
