# Pressed Flower

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2026/03/24/pressed-flower/
- Published: 2026-03-24T21:58:26+00:00
- Author: shuktara

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**Author: **Arshi Mortuza[⌊A sample cover of the book: red handloom sari with gold embossed nameplate and lettering for the title and author's name. The border of the sari lines the right hand margin of the cover.⌉](https://writersworkshopindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Pressed-Flower.jpeg)
**
Pages:** 98 **Year of Publication:** 2026 **Price:** ₹400 / $15 (USD) **ISBN:** 
978-81-995932-3-7 (9788199593237)

_**About the Author**_
 Born in 1997, Arshi Mortuza is a Bangladeshi poet living
somewhere between countries and selves, carried by a childhood spent following her
mother’s diplomatic trail. She writes from the edges — womanhood tangled with otherness,
mental noise, and the ache of not quite belonging. Her poems dig into myth and memory
with a voice that’s both sharp and soft, honest about struggle and longing.

Her father, a professor of English, handed her a love for language that’s still 
the thread holding her together. She is the author of _One Minute Past Midnight_(
Nymphea Publications, 2022), and her poems have appeared in several publications.

Arshi holds two MAs in English Literature, one from Queen’s University and one from
the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, where she also did her BA. By day, she
teaches English as a Second Language in Toronto, certified and caffeine-fuelled.
At home, she is kept company by her husband and their cats.

_**About the Book**_

> “There is a wide — and wild — variety of pressed flowers between the covers of
> this ambitious new collection from a promising and fast-maturing young poet. Daringly
> combining verse and prose, Arshi can be lyrical, confessional, satirical and visceral
> as she takes in the personal and the political, the social and the sociopathological,
> often reworking literary, folkloric and mythological elements in startling new
> ways.”
> _Kaiser Haq, Professor of English_

_**Teaser**_

_Ophelia Calls the Crisis Hotline_

It’s like I’m being pricked
 by fantastic garlands from the floral fantasies I have
woven of him and I.

No, I am not in immediate danger.
 You have clearly never loved a mama’s boy.

It’s like I’m swimming
 against an all-consuming current and I am getting tired,
oh, so tired of fighting back.

I drown myself
 in reveries by the river.

Breathless.
 I feel water filling up my lungs. The metaphorical kind.

No, I don’t need an ambulance.
 Unless maybe they can drop me off to a nunnery?

The literal kind.

_**Contents**_
 79 poems

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