When God Is a Traveller

Praise for Arundhathi Subramaniam’s Poetry ‘By turns both 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 ‘… 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.’ Bruce King, Journal of Postcolonial Literature ‘Few poets capture contradictory impulses so convincingly. This unexpected range is what makes Subramaniam’s work such a pleasure to read. You never know what country, mood, streetscape or relationship you’ll be plunged into but the ferociously intelligent attention to detail ensures that you are given every opportunity to engage with the pure energy of the poem.’ – Jules Mann, Poetry International Web Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poems explore ambivalences – the desire for adventure and anchorage; expansion and containment; vulnerability and strength; freedom and belonging; withdrawal and engagement; language as exciting resource and as desperate refuge. Her poems wander, dig and fall; they come to terms with unsettlement, uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility; they explore intersections between the sacred and the sensual; and search for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames. These are poems of wonder and precarious elation, and all the roadblocks and rewards on the long dangerous route to recovering what it is to be alive and human.