K. Srilata

K. Srilata is a poet, fiction writer, academic and occasional translator. She is also Professor (English) at IIT Madras, India. Her debut novel "Table for Four", longlisted for the Man Asian literary prize is published by Penguin India. Writers Workshop, Kolkata recently brought out her second anthology of poems "Arriving Shortly". Her 2013 collection, "Writing Octopus", was published by Authorspress.

Srilata's most recent collection, "The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans," is published in 2019 by Poetwala, Mumbai. Her third microchap, "Asleep Under My Tongue," includes selections this collection. The microchap's cover art is by kind permission of the artist, Roshni Vyam.

K. Srilata's website: https://ksrilata.wordpress.com/

We are grateful to the author for permission to share her work.

• Kevin Keough has created the music & sings the poem by K. Srilata, "Dreaming, Mostly of Nameless Things" on his YouTube page: Kevin Keough Music

► Srilata's microchaps & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap	Selected Poem(s)
Asleep Under My Tongue
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover art is by kind permission of the artist, Roshni Vyam - Poems in this collection are from a larger collection: "The Unmistakeable Presence of Absent Humans" © 2019 Poetwala, Mumbai	Asleep Under My Tongue You are gone, And so, too, my word for you. It sleeps under my tongue now. I have no one to call by it. Ever since you left, your name has played catch-catch with me. I chase after it, up and down the stairs, but it has proven too quick, too cunning, for me. Last spotted, it was standing at the head of the stairs, throwing down winks, the sly creature, luscious as a hill orange, presently asleep under my tongue. • K. Srilata © 2019	A Poem in My Mother Tongue When I moved out, I left behind an aquarium, in it a fish, mad and solitary, swimming, the entire line of a poem in my mother tongue, a poem I am still fishing for, miles away and out in the stinging rain. • K. Srilata © 2019
Dreaming Mostly of Nameless Things
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover art "Nebraska Horizon" by Peg Quinn •	I Drink Black Tea in the Early Morning Light There is no milk in the house And everything is bare. I drink black tea in the early morning light, and idly hope that the day’s beauty will remain, that I will write a line like Sheenagh Pugh’s: The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you. Pugh meant snow but her keyboard came up with sorrow. May my keyboard play such tricks on me! Outside the small ambit of such hopes, the day is creeping up like a large bug with questions in its poetry-killing eyes. I close my eyes and think of lines to write. I drink black tea in the early morning light. • K. Srilata © 2013	Dreaming, Mostly, of Nameless Things In these blue mountains where tall trees lean over like gentle giraffes, we go to sleep dreaming, mostly, of nameless things. Last night, I dreamt of horizontal rain, of a tree with its irreverent hoofs in the sky. • K. Srilata © 2013
Somewhere a Skylight
Click title to download PDF microchap Artwork by K. Ananya • Acknowledgments All poems appear in "Arriving Shortly," Writers Workshop, Kolkata—publisher "The Ninth Month: Spent Waiting" also appears in "Seablue Child" Brown Critique, Kolkata—publisher and in "99 Words: A Collection of Contemporary English Poems" edited by Manu Dash Rayagada: Panchabati 2006	Somewhere a Skylight Opens Black birds scatter, slide off the tresses of a rain tree sunset lit. Something returns to my heart, past rib-cage, blood and bone, something I don’t have a word for. Somewhere a skylight opens. In the cupped hands of the ocean lie many rivers. Not a drop spills out the sides of the earth. Something returns to my heart, past rib-cage, blood and bone, something I don’t have a word for. Somewhere a skylight opens. On looking, I find this thing for which I don’t have a word. It is a simple thing without frames. A thing I want to sing of even when the skylight only shows black bits of night. • K. Srilata © 2012	The Ninth Month: Spent Waiting 'Inside me crouch two hungers' and an ocean full of thirst. My belly ripples as an arm’s imagined shape yawns lazily. Sore, my womb wants to empty itself impatient of that long heaviness. 'Put him down for a while'. Three hours of restless, nightless heat The skies forgetting to burst… On my balcony a heavily pregnant monkey balances gracefully legs apart waiting for nothing in particular. • K. Srilata © 2012

Poets