# There Used to Be a Lake Here Once

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2024/04/15/there-used-to-be-a-lake-here-once/
- Published: 2024-04-15T20:25:11+00:00
- Author: shuktara

5/5 - (1 vote)

**Author: **Sritama Sen[⌊A sample cover of the book: black 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/2024/04/There-Used-to-Be-a-Lake-Here-Once-e1713186254640.jpeg)
**
Pages:** 76 **Year of Publication:** 2024 **Price:** Rs 300 **ISBN:** 978-81-968192-
9-3 (9788196819293)

_**About the Author**_
 Sritama Sen (she/they) is a queer poet, essayist and writer.
Growing up in West Bengal, she completed her BA and MA in English at Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, and has had her poetry and stories published in various literary zines.
Their work explores themes of girlhood, trans identity and queerness in a Bengali
context, without being restricted by literary genre conventions. This is her debut
poetry collection.

_**Teaser**_

_Drifter Curriculum Vitae_

As of experience, there is none
 unless you count the letters illicit-natured, dropped
like sentences inside the bags of cisgender girls, who would grow into their wind-
chafed skin and flirt with me on rebound principle.

And some stories, gathered pell-mell
 liberally dosed by plagiarism, from books 
my friends wouldn’t touch with a gun to their head. Morbid narratives of death, 
rape and anarchy, for the faux-deep tenth grade feminist throbbing with untapped
molecular energy in our burgeoning bosoms.

Plus, a handful of essays typed on the Notes App,
 clicking teeth in fear and pressing
SEND – here, take my body in a negotiable word limit, take my trauma, make of it
a tableau of rainbow-bright aesthetics. Some of them like candles calling moths –
queers camping in my mail for days, others brought death threats, but at least hey,
I got to have my cheque and eat it too.

Finally, these poems, I guess. These too,
 I offer up to your kind discretion, twenty-
three years of non-marketing personal body politic for the diversity crowds. Not
queer enough to be the next Hoshang Merchant. But too queer to be flashing it on
LinkedIn. Trans paradox, in solving lies joy.

So as of experience, I have none
 except what I tore out with my teeth from your
Pride manifesto, your corporate shtick, peddling my pieces per hundred-line count:
Here I am. Does my body of work inspire?

_**Contents**_

I. HOME

Turmeric / 10
 Virtue and Knowledge / 12 Complicit / 15 Sleepover Trauma Dump / 
17 Ode to Katrina Kaif / 20 Come on Barbie! / 22 Family Heirlooms / 24 Grandfather
on His Deathbed / 27 Grandmother Ruminates on My Coming Out / 31 Mother, Rationalizing/
33 Alo / 36

II. AND THE WORLD

Chorus of the Saltwater Mermaids (Now Extinct) / 40
 First Love / 42 Progressive
Advice / 46 Hena Didi / 48 Spotting a Kolkata Butch / 50 The Way of Fruit / 52 Dyke
Speed-Dating Round One / 53 Say it! Say it! / 56 Notes from Queer Theory Class /
58 Nativity Scene / 61 Gender As I Know It / 62 You Who Wear a Binder / 65 Drifter
Curriculum Vitae / 67 Transgender Limerick for My Father Who Really Wanted Me to
Include a Limerick in My First Poetry Collection / 69 Epilogue: There Used to Be
a Lake Here Once / 70

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