Here I am, weightless /
now take me home’ So That You Know is the quintessential Mani Rao collection. These are poems that hold the playful exuberance of youth and the dazzling insight of age; that are at times measured, at times extravagant. What unites them is their commitment to mining deep into the recesses of the heart and offering moments of ecstatic revelation. ‘Every morning you would breathe me fly,’ says the poet, and one can feel the words take wing. Mani Rao’s work has, over the years, acquired a reputation for battering against the doors of poetic convention, experimenting with form and language, and untethering images so they run fast and thick. Part visual, part text, So That You Know stands testimony to the mischief and anarchy of her poetry. If Mani Rao’s language has been described as ‘molten lava’, here is the book that reminds you why. Each stanza-searing, incandescent, unstoppable.