Dear Timid Body is a collection of "delicate" poems with a distinctly feminine point of view. It covers such themes as longing, memory, desire, emotional vulnerability and love.
I think "delicacy" was really the most important thing to convey with this design, coupled with the explicitly feminine perspective and sensibility. In the brief, the only major element that was suggested was the depiction of a female body. I agreed that this was a good instinct, not least because of the vastness of the suggestion, but also because of the many visual connotations already connecting the idea of delicacy with the female body.
As you can see from the images depicted here, I went through a few very different iterations before landing on the published cover. Throughout each iteration, however, there are still many connecting threads. In the end, I felt floral motifs were important, as various flowers did crop up in the text quite a bit, and I really liked the symbol of the moth, which I believe only came up once, but ultimately works very well to tie the entire image together. Both the flowers and the moth are inherently fragile things, and when coupled with the female form give an overall sense of that delicacy that one gets from reading the poems.
Pink may have been a slightly obvious choice for this cover, but its evocation of and association with femininity is undeniable. I strove for a soft pink, which is a range of colours I enjoy anyway. Ultimately, I tried this design in a few different colour variations, including greens and creams, but this was the one that stood the strongest.