Arundhathi Subramaniam – författare

Best Spirituality Books of 2025 - Spirituality and PracticeIn this inspiring book of divine discovery, poet and seeker Arundhathi Subramaniam gives us a glimpse into the lives of four self-contained, unapologetic female spiritual travelers.“Among the finest pieces of spiritual truth-telling literature I have ever read … A book to savor and celebrate.”—Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism“As the pages turn, one feels a growing sense of shared humanity, even kinship, with these extraordinary practitioners of the sacred.”—Tim Parks, author of Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic’s Search for Health and HealingIn life, spiritual paths are often as unique as we are. Bringing together the voices of four women mystics walking very different spiritual paths, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam reveals the expansive potential of forging an intimate, personal connection with the divine. We'll meet these four travelers:Sri Annapurani Amma, who left the safety of home to follow the summons of a long-dead saint and chooses to live naked,Balarishi Vishwashirasini, a nada yoga teacher who became a guru as a child and admits she's missed out on a real childhood,Lata Mani, who discovered tantra after a major accident left her with a brain injury and today talks of how the spiritual life is deeply anchored in the wisdom of the body—not unlike the redwood trees of her adopted home, andMaa Karpoori, who needed to resist pressure to marry, and found her calling in a local yoga class and now radiates fierce independence and the contagious joy of living.Sensitive, insightful, and lyrical, Women Who Wear Only Themselves bathes us in the kind of mystery that feels deeply familiar and invites us to connect with whatever sparks our spiritual fire.

These are poems of wonder and precarious elation, about learning to embrace the seemingly disparate landscapes of hermitage and court, the seemingly diverse addresses of mystery and clarity, disruption and stillness - all the roadblocks and rewards on the long dangerous route to recovering what it is to be alive and human. Wandering, digging, falling, coming to terms with unsettlement and uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility, exploring intersections between the sacred and the sensual, searching for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames - these are some of the recurrent themes. These poems explore various ambivalences - around human intimacy with its bottlenecks and surprises, life in a Third World megapolis, myth, the politics of culture and gender, and the persistent trope of the existential journey (which intensifies in the new poems). Arundhathi Subramaniam's previous book from Bloodaxe, Where I Live: Selected Poems (2009), drew on her first two books published in India plus a whole new collection. Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, When God is a Traveller was her fourth collection of poetry, and was the Poetry Book Society Choice for Winter 2014.

Shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize Poetry Book Society Choice These are poems of wonder and precarious elation, about learning to embrace the seemingly disparate landscapes of hermitage and court, the seemingly diverse addresses of mystery and clarity, disruption and stillness - all the roadblocks and rewards on the long dangerous route to recovering what it is to be alive and human. Wandering, digging, falling, coming to terms with unsettlement and uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility, exploring intersections between the sacred and the sensual, searching for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames - these are some of the recurrent themes. These poems explore various ambivalences - around human intimacy with its bottlenecks and surprises, life in a Third World megapolis, myth, the politi of culture and gender, and the persistent trope of the existential journey. Arundhathi Subramaniam''s previous book from Bloodaxe, Where I Live: Selected Poems (2009), drew on her first two books published in India plus a whole new collection. When God is a Traveller is her fourth collection of poetry. ''A marvellous collection, wonderfully varied and rich'' A remarkable book from a remarkable poet'' - John Burnside. ''This is writing that creeps up on the reader quietly, sometimes with just the whisper of a sari, or the taste of a lullaby, and yet spins suddenly on the edge of stark recognition'' - Imtiaz Dharker. ''...one of the finest poets writing in India today'' It is not dulcet music you hear in Where I Live. It''s the swish of swordplay, each poem skewered at sabre-point and then placed on an electric grille to sizzle like a rasher on a barbecue'' - Keki Daruwalla, The Hindu. ''...a strong personality and an individual voice; her poems feel as if they are meant to be read aloud as well as on the page.... Subramaniam is becoming a major poet.'' - Bruce King, Journal of Postcolonial Literature.

Where I Live combines Arundhathi Subramaniam''s first two Indian collections of poetry, On Cleaning Bookshelves and Where I Live, with a selection of new work. Her poems explore various ambivalences - around human intimacy with its bottlenecks and surprises, life in a Third World megalopolis, myth, the politi of culture and gender, and the persistent trope of the existential journey. They probe contradictory impulses: the desire for adventure and anchorage; expansion and containment; vulnerability and strength; freedom and belonging; withdrawal and engagement; an approach to language as exciting resource and desperate refuge. Her new poems are a meditation on desire - in which the sensual and sacred mingle inextricably. There is a fascination with the skins that separate self from other, self from self, thing from no-thing. These are poems of dark need, of urgency, of desire as derailment, and derailment as possibility. ''This is writing that creeps up on the reader quietly, sometimes with just the whisper of a sari, or the taste of a lullaby, and yet spins suddenly on the edge of stark recognition. Arundhathi Subramaniam''s is a strong new voice'' - Imtiaz Dharker ''A marvellous collection, wonderfully varied and rich'' - John Burnside ''Subramaniam''s poetry is one of illumination. She flashes a pencil-torchlight on a subject, and suddenly you feel you are the richer for it'' Even more than precision, what defines her verse is its subtlety and the angle of vision from which she sees life'' - Keki Daruwalla

The poems of Arundhathi Subramaniam's Love Without a Story celebrate an expanding kinship: of passion and friendship, mythic quest and modern-day longing, in a world animated by dialogue and dissent, delirium and silence. Circling themes of intimacy and time, they return to the urgency of conversation: that fragile bridge across the frozen attitudes that divide our world. But at the heart of the collection is a deeper preoccupation, with those blurry places where humans might walk with gods, where the body might touch the beyond, where the enchanted might intersect effortlessly with the everyday. Where one stumbles upon what the poet simply calls ‘love without a story’. Arundhathi Subramaniam's previous book from Bloodaxe, When God Is a Traveller, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Love Without a Story is her fourth collection of poetry. Her earlier work is available in Where I Live: New & Selected Poems.

The poems of Arundhathi Subramaniam's Love Without a Story celebrate an expanding kinship: of passion and friendship, mythic quest and modern-day longing, in a world animated by dialogue and dissent, delirium and silence. Circling themes of intimacy and time, they return to the urgency of conversation: that fragile bridge across the frozen attitudes that divide our world. But at the heart of the collection is a deeper preoccupation, with those blurry places where humans might walk with gods, where the body might touch the beyond, where the enchanted might intersect effortlessly with the everyday. Where one stumbles upon what the poet simply calls ‘love without a story’. Arundhathi Subramaniam's previous book from Bloodaxe, When God Is a Traveller, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Love Without a Story is her fourth collection of poetry. Her earlier work is available in Where I Live: New & Selected Poems.

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. Arundhathi Subramaniam has published five collections in India and three books with Bloodaxe in the UK including When God Is a Traveller (2014), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and Love Without a Story (2020). Her earlier work is available in Where I Live: New & Selected Poems (2009). She has published other books on Buddhism and spiritual figures.