Arundhathi Subramaniam writes poetry and prose. She has been active as critic, curator, anthologist, poetry editor, and divides her time between New York, Chennai and Mumbai.
Described as ‘one of the finest poets writing in India today’ [The Hindu, 2010] and ‘a unique poet of our times… in a league all by herself’ [Indian Literature, 2021], she is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry 2020 (awarded by India’s national academy of letters).
Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2015, her other poetry awards include the Il Ceppo Prize in Italy, the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award, the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Devi Award for Poetry (from The New Indian Express), the Mystic Kalinga Award, the Trinity Arts Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, the Homi Bhabha and Charles Wallace fellowships, among others.
Her fifteen books include the recent trilogy on female mysticism: the book of poems, The Gallery of Upside Down Women, the anthology of Indian women mystic poetry, Wild Women: Seekers, Protagonists and Goddesses in Sacred Indian Poetry; a book of essays, Women Who Wear Only Themselves.
As prose writer, she is the author of the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life, The Book of the Buddha (reprinted several times) and Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru) READ MORE…
As editor, her earlier work includes the much-loved Penguin anthology of Bhakti poetry, Eating God: and a book on sacred journeys, Pilgrim’s India, among others.
Widely anthologized and translated, she has presented her work at international poetry conferences and festivals in the UK, Italy, Spain, Holland, Turkey, China, West Africa, Israel, Australia and the US, as well as various parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Her work has been translated into several languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Rumanian.
In 2004, she was invited by the Poetry International Web to be the founder editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web, which has grown over the years into a significant web archive of contemporary Indian poetry.
In 1994, she was invited to lead Chauraha, an inter-arts discussion-based forum at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA, Mumbai). She was in charge of this well-known arts hub in the city for over fifteen years. Later, she was also the Head of Indian Dance at the NCPA.
As an independent curator, she created a widely-acclaimed festival of dance and sacred poetry in 2014, entitled Stark Raving Mad. In 2019, she curated another successful festival of music and female mystic poetry, Wild Women, at the NCPA; and the Mystic Kalinga Festival around Bhakti Poetry in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Her most recent festival at the NCPA, in November 2023, was Goddess, a celebration of the Divine Feminine through poetry and the performing arts.
A longstanding journalist on the performing arts and literature, she has been writing since 1989 for various newspapers (including The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express, among others). She has also been columnist on culture and literature for Time Out, Mumbai, The Indian Express and New Woman.
newly launched
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.
Reviews of the book here
previous books
Wild Women (Penguin [Ebury Press], 2024)
In this anthology of sacred poetry that arrives after the much-loved book, Eating God, Arundhathi Subramaniam weaves together haunting voices of, by and for women across the Indian subcontinent.
Here is a lineage of audacious woman-centred spirituality that traverses the poetry of ancient Buddhist nuns, Bhakti and Sufi mystics, tantrikas and Vedantins. link to reviews of Wild Women
For a complete list of Arundhathi’s books click here
Poetry
Bloodaxe, March 2025 and Ebury Press (Penguin Random House India), July 2025
(Bloodaxe Books, 2020)
Prose
Anthologies
Arundhathi Subramaniam 