Sujata Bhatt's first book of poems, the award-winning Brunizem, appeared in 1988. In a very short time she has gained recognition as one of the distinct and reckonable new voices. She has things to say about her native India and her native tongue (Gujarati), about America and Britain, and about Germany where she now lives. She is, the New Statesman declared,
'one of the finest poets alive', and alive in a unique way to language, to issues of politics and gender, to place and history. Hers is a remarkable complete imagination, generous and at the same time unsparingly severe in its quest for the difficult truths of experience.

The Stinking Rose was published 23 February 1995 and is Sujata Bhatt's third collection. The Stinking Rose is one of the names for a plant that arouses strong feelings: garlic. No one is neutral about it. Sujata Bhatt explores the mythologies and the magical and practical aspects of garlic in a sequence of poems. The book is also haunted by places, especially Vancouver Island, and by her native India.

The Stinking Rose was shortlisted for Best Collection in the 1995 Forward Prize for Poetry.