Love Without a Story

By Arundhathi Subramaniam

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Nov 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781780375175

Arundhathi Subramaniam

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). She has published two books of poetry in Britain 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, and 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. Her latest collection, Love Without a Story, is due from Bloodaxe in 2020. She has also written 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). In 2006 she appeared at London’s Poetry International festival and gave readings throughout Britain on a tour organised by the Poetry Society. She also took part in the T.S. Eliot Prize reading at London’s Southbank Centre in January 2015.

Book preview

ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM

LOVE WITHOUT A STORY

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.

‘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

Cover art by Parama Libralesso

ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM

Love without a Story

CONTENTS

title page

I Grew Up in an Age of Poets

Deleting the Picture

A Theory of Wandering

And Where It Might End

Mitti

Finding Dad

The strange thing about love

La Verna

A First Monsoon Again

How to Read Indian Myth

Remembering

Bring on the Screen Savers

The Fine Art of Ageing

Missing Friends

Parents

Parents II

When Landscape Becomes Woman

This Could Be Enough

Tongue

Let Me Be Adjective

Let There Be Grid

The Need for Nests

Ninda-stuti

Song for Catabolic Women

The End of the World

Shorthand

The Monk

The Lover

The Bus to Ajmer

In Short

The Problem with Windows

Been There

Backbencher

If It Must Be Now

‘Dying is hard work’

Goddess

Goddess II

Goddess III

Memo I

Memo II

In Praise of Conversations

Afterword

acknowledgements

about the author

copyright

I Grew Up in an Age of Poets

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