Her first collection of poetry, On Cleaning Bookshelves, was published in 2001, followed by Where I Live (2005), When God is a Traveller (2014), Love Without a Story (2020), and her most recent, Wild Women: Seekers, Protagonists and Goddesses in Sacred Indian Poetry (2024). Alongside poetry, she has worked as an editor, anthologist, critic and curator.  

Subramaniam has received various awards, including the Raza Award for Poetry (2009) Mystic Kalinga Literary Award (2017) and the Charles Wallace Fellowship at the University of Stirling (2003). Her collection, ‘When God is a Traveller’, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize in 2014. 

Many of Subramaniam’s works contend with metaphysical and spiritual themes. The poet cites her spiritual journey (‘satsangh’), 3 as a driving force, inspiring her understanding of poetry as ‘the distillation of sound and pause’.4 Subramaniam draws influence from mystic poets in Bhatki, Zen and Sufi traditions, citing A.K Ramanujan’s translations of Nammalvar as majorly influential.5 She also credits poet Nissim Ezekiel, as a mentor, acknowledging the presence of his advice as an ‘unsentimental sanctuary’.6 

Subramaniam’s style is characterised by caesura, pauses, and enjambment, enhancing the feelings of tension and indecision which accompany the complex themes of religion, and gender: ‘They matter / the minor questions / the smell of a new wardrobe / the eternal bus ticket / in the bag’s second compartment, the leer / of the late shift security guard.’ (‘Learning To Say Yes’).  

Subramaniam’s work speaks to the interplay between social, emotional and political aspects of her life. Many of her poems reflect on her identity, and experiences, as an Indian woman of Hindu heritage; ‘Irreplaceable, I belong here / like I never will again / my credentials never in question / my tertiary nook in a gnarled family tree /non-negotiable.’ Subramaniam’s reflections on hierarchical norms and generational deference in her poem ‘Winter, Delhi, 1997’ hint at conflicting feelings of belonging and entrapment inside the family structure. Subramaniam’s meditations on her life echo the many lived experiences of women (both present and past) who have played their part in longstanding Indian cultural constructs. In its anecdotal tone, her poetry oscillates between the intimate and the universal. 

She also contends with ideas of diasporic Indian identity within Western intellectual contexts. ‘To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn’t Find Me Identifiably Indian’ addresses the cultural prejudices which exist amongst Subramaniam’s own literary peers, in an - ostensibly - accepting and diverse creative community: ‘You imagine you’ve cracked / my deepest fantasy – / oh, to be in an Edwardian vicarage / living out my dharma’. Subramaniam confronts her critics' reductive, Anglo-centric and imperialistic attitudes towards her identity and work: ‘it’s all yours to measure / the pathology of my breath’. She highlights the confinement and regression of such stereotypes, which continue to persist even in ‘progressive’ poetic communities, revealing the Western tendency to quantify, analyse and control foreign identity.  

Through use of her individual poetic voice, Subramaniam’s work reconciles tradition with modernity, and continues to shape current conversations on spirituality, identity, and the poetic form.