Includes a sequence of 25 poems which explore the mythologies and the practical aspects of garlic, the stinking rose. This collection is also haunted by places - Vancouver Island, the poet's native India, and Europe. A dialogue between new worlds and old features poems in Gujarati and English.

A gathering of over two decades' work by Sujata Bhatt, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary poetry.

Indonesia, South Africa, Estonia, Lithuania, Shetland, Nicaragua: many worlds meet in these poems as nature dyes Sujata Bhatt's many languages with its own hues. The real merges with the surreal, certainties are undone in an open-ended quest. A Chinese cook ignores a predatory snake, a heart surgeon lives most intensely between operations, Gregor Samsa's sister proposes a different sort of metamorphosis, someone listens to the Holy Ghost sing, a woman hears her daughter's voice in birdsong - and the 'poppies in translation' mutate according to the languages and histories they inhabit,...