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Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poems map a wobbling world, trying to find its axis in a season of change. Fabrics tear, lands splinter, stances harden, loved ones die, names dissolve. But wandering through these pages are some extraordinary women – women who vault nimbly over borders, walk naked, walk aslant, and sometimes upside down.
Leaping from the past into a global present, these exuberant voices offer tips on how to retain one’s spine through life’s giddiest rollercoaster rides. Blurring the divide between the mundane and the magical, the historical and the imaginary, they point to a new world that might lie within the folds of the old. A world that requires a new set of skills: how to find the right nicknames, how to ‘gatecrash into the present’, how to ‘go skinny-dipping in the self’. These are songs of bewilderment, insight and startling freedom.
'These beautiful poems have that quality of being breathed into the world that always means that deep experience went into them. The spirituality here is so light, so witty, so spontaneous, so open to the unknown, so open to the life of the mind, so generous, so visceral, how did it come to be so…heavy a topic in the West? How did it come to be a topic at all?' – Dennis Nurkse
'By turns laconic and passionate, she asks questions about morality and integrity that many poets simply refuse to take on. Yet she is also an extraordinary love poet… A remarkable book from a remarkable poet.' – John Burnside, Poetry Review, on Where I Live
'Subramaniam’s verse is imbued with the spiritual and mythic in this wonderful collection, Love Without A Story. Poised and measured, these poems encourage the reader to think and feel deeply, to sit and watch as Subramaniam unveils artfully composed observations about the cosmos we inhabit and those we share it with. Love Without a Story is a breath-taking and heart-warming collection.' – Poetry Book Society Bulletin
'Arundhathi Subramaniam's collection, Love Without a Story, is crammed full of delicious sensations, drawn from a multitude of cultures... My lasting impression of her work is of sheer, inventive, self-delighting energy... a fabulous book!.' – Dorothy Yamamoto, ARTEMISpoetry
'To read Love Without a Story... is to be in the presence of a poet who is capable of rendering the physical and the everyday with a sort of sensual plenitude whilst at the same time exploring connections outwards onto more transcendental, sometimes mythical planes...' – Tom Phillips, Inkroci Magazine
'Love Without a Story is a lyrical exposition of the journey through life; we are left the richer for having read these poems.' – Sue Wallace-Shaddad, The Alchemy Spoon
'A sense of wonder and striking contrasts pervade the Indian poet’s fourth collection. The sacred meets the everyday, cerebral wordplay delivers full-blooded emotion, and ancient Hindu myths run alongside contemporary urban life. Breathtaking in scope, taking in religious faith, friendships, love affairs and existential themes. Often the work questions poetry itself – but it is always rooted in the physical and the tangible, with fresh visual imagery that really packs a punch. Bold and thought-provoking.' – Juanita Coulson, The Lady, on When God Is a Traveller
'Arundhathi Subramaniam has already won acclaim as a poet of integrity… There is a beautiful uncertainty about her poems… intimately physical, intense enough to scald and char, along with a will to withdraw, to renounce… unhibitedly sensual while still yearning for transcendence. This ambivalence, combined with a sense of wonder, of unexpectedness, of moods as well as words, is what marks her apart,' – K. Satchidanandan, Frontline, on When God Is a Traveller.
Subramaniam’s verse is imbued with the spiritual and mythic in this wonderful collection, Love Without a Story. Poised and measured, these poems encourage the reader to think and feel deeply, to sit and watch as Subramaniam unveils artfully composed observations about the cosmos we inhabit and those we share it with. Love Without a Story is a breath-taking and heart-warming collection.—Poetry Book Society Bulletin
'Indian English poet Arundhati Subramaniam’s latest poetry collection The Gallery of Upside Down Women brings together pieces about women from Indian myth and scripture across regions and languages, women in general, and glimpses into ordinary lives rendered fresh and extraordinary through evocative expression.' – Soni Wadhwa, Asian Review of Books
'... The Gallery of Upside Down Women represents a new installment in the poet’s “fascination with women on sacred journeys” and confirms her reputation as one of India’s foremost poets. [...] Drawing on spiritual research to cast a sharp glance at the present world, The Gallery of Upside Down Women shows throughout a masterful comfort in the use of poetic language and technique, which in turn allows Subramaniam to handle her subjects with critical elegance and style.' – Graziano Krätli, World Literature Today
Arundhathi Subramaniam is an award-winning poet and writer on spirituality and culture. Winner of the inaugural Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry in 2015, the Raza Award for Poetry and the International Piero Bigongiari Prize, she mostly lives in Bombay (a city she is perennially on the verge of leaving) or New York. She has published four books of poetry in the UK with Bloodaxe: Where I Live: New & Selected Poems (2009), which combines selections from her first two Indian collections, On Cleaning Bookshelves and Where I Live, with new work; When God Is a Traveller (2014), a Poetry Book Society Choice, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, won the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize at the Jaipur Literary Festival, and was awarded the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy; Love Without a Story (2020); and The Gallery of Upside Down Women (2025). She has also written Wild Women: Seekers, Protagonists and Goddesses in Sacred Indian Poetry (Penguin Books India, 2024), The Book of Buddha (Penguin, 2005) and Sadhguru: More Than a Life (Penguin, 2010), co-edited Confronting Love (Penguin, 2005), an anthology of Indian love poems in English, and edited Pilgrim's India: An Anthology (Penguin, 2011) and Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry (2014). Women Who Wear Only Themselves: Four Travelers on Their Sacred Journeys is forthcoming from HarperOne in the US and India in 2025.
Cycling Hands Free on Air
15 The World Takes a Breath
17 Staying Unnamed
19 The Marketplace of Poets
21 The Breaking News Lullaby
24 Masks Off
26 The Great Mother
28 Grant a Woman Her Fifties
30 This Fruit
32 The Hand
34 The World Breaks
36 And Suddenly It’s Evening
38 The Tailor
40 The Women No Longer Wait
43 Another Way to Stop Waiting
45 What Stories are Left
47 Patachara Awakens
The Gallery of Upside Down Women
53 That Girl from Karaikkal
56 The Truth-speaker’s Word Doesn’t Change
59 Where the Yoginis Wear No Heads
62 Questions for Akka Mahadevi
64 Unstained by White
68 The Maker of Indigo Poems
God’s Forgotten Nickname
75 The Idol Worshipper’s Song
76 The Idolater’s Way
78 God’s Forgotten Nickname
81 Nothing Is Singular
83 What Do You Do with the Moon in Urdu Poetry?
86 Just in Case
87 Forgiving Teachers
89 Some Names Take Time
92 The Dog in the Manhattan Elevator
94 Some Said He Looked Like James Dean
96 When Two Women Drink Chai Together
98 Consecration
100 Tips for Growing Up
104 The Crone
106 Creation Story
111 Acknowledgements