Ankush Banerjee, our reviews editor, interviews Mani Rao, author of nine books of poetry, the most recent one being, So That You Know, launched at the Bengaluru Poetry Festival on 03 Aug 25. We speak to Mani about her new book, some of her poems, and her writing process. 

AB: Hello, Mani! Thank you for doing this with us. At the outset, tell us a little more about So That You Know? Does the book have clear-cut thematic focuses, sustained engagement with specifics, or is it more sprawling, and diverse in terms of its themes and preoccupations?

MR: Readers could probably answer this question better, but I can attempt an answer. I think many of the poems are about minutiae and a moment – about being here now – they size up, acknowledge, realise what is. (I guess I mean that they rarely speculate, pretend or go lofty). Many of the poems are meditations on specific discoveries – candid emotions – in relationships with a love(r). Overall, the delight of being t/here, and of the micro-grain of experience.

On the face of it, the book is sprawling, especially if you consider the selections from previous poetry books. In fact the first section has some poems written over 20 years ago, and that were never published.

AB: You begin your Preface by raising an interesting, though long-standing argument – about how the relation between life and art, rather than being apart, is deeply intertwined with each other. Given the age we are living in, wherein both, the boundaries between real and reel life, and how art is produced and consumed, have become so fuzzy, how does such fuzziness configure the the life/experience – art relationship? In short, where does the art and life equation stand today?

MR: Projection of the self has become much more important today. What to say on social media – and the craving and the pressure to be liked. If it has not been seen and liked, it is deleted. Is there a face buried under the mask? But our reality has not changed. We still live with our illnesses, with the consequences of our actions, and experience this world directly. Art depends on our experience of living.

AB: I notice many the poems, such as ‘If it’s any consolation’, ‘Story Moon’, and ‘Just Looking’, have woven within them, either thematically or formally, a self-contradiction; what I mean is, they seem to turn upon themselves. What do you think is the role of interweaving contradictions in poems, and how does this technical strategy affect these poems or poems in general?

MR: When you run a finger along a möbius strip or loop, you proceed smoothly on the same plane, but then abruptly discover that it has landed you on the flip-side. Same co-ordinates, but the other side. Many of these poems were like that. They began in one place and ended up as their opposites. I mean, the poems wrote themselves to their own opposite possibilities. Or perhaps every idea holds its opposite deep within itself and you only have to plumb it to get there. So it is a kind of wholeness, rather than a contradiction.

AB: Reading some of your ‘about love’ poems, I was reminded of Louis Gluck’s observation about Emily Dickenson, about how the dignity and restraint of her phrasing didn’t necessarily obscure the source of her poetry; on the contrary, Dickenson’s poems inherently assume that other people would also have similar life experiences, and this is what makes them so incredible. Can you tell us a little about the ‘about love’ poems in the book, such as, ‘This Marriage’, ‘How I Knew’, ‘Statutory Warning’, ‘Happily M’? Where do these ‘come’ from? And more importantly, where do you assume the reader in these poems to be, i.e. is he/she voyeur, ally, or objective observer, among other positions?

MR: The specific poems you refer to come from reflecting over the practice of marriage. At best, it is a sustained mirror for the self. Mostly it is a mixed bag, with its realities and facades, hopes and hopelessness. At worst, it is a travesty of the spirit. Why do human beings prolong the transitory? Are we incapable of loyalty unless under duress? There is no knowledge to be gained for the self via marriage beyond the (limited) warranty of the formula. Yet, it creates an undergirding –  a nest – for others.

And where is the reader in this theme? All of the options you outline are possible. That’s not for me to speculate or know. The poems are not addressing an external reader and making any case or argument. The readers are all within me. Just as the writer splits into writer and reader during the process, the reader will be in the skin of the writer during the poem.

AB: There are quite a few poems in which you use rhyme. Do you think it is a formal risk a poet takes while using rhyme in this day and age? Tell us your thought process behind the decision to use rhyme.

MR: Poor rhyme is when you act like you’re in jail before it’s time. The anticipation of rhyming constrains the scope. Even before you explore the next thought and line, you’ve already decided the end-rhyme and then make do with the thought that fits the rhyme. But when the rhyme is successful, there has been ample scope for thought, the reader focuses on the delights of the meaning, and then marvels at how the rhyme added the power and sound-value to the poem. There is no risk when the rhyming is successful.

AB: I was spellbound by your poem-essay, ‘I, Lorine Niedecker’, not only because I am a huge admirer of Niedecker’s work, but also because you have managed to interweave surprise, playfulness, and a lot of dense historical information in that poem. Can you tell us a little more about the poem-essay, your engagement with Niedecker and her work, and how it has influenced your own poetics, if at all?

MR: I’m so glad you liked that one! I really related to her writing and her approach when I encountered her work for the first time. I was to write an essay about her work, and decided to use her own words. How do you express admiration for someone except by voicing it, and re-reading, repeating, their words? Much like a musician playing a master’s composition. And then if I really embraced her poetics, of “the condensary”, I too would apply it back upon the original. So I retold her life and poetics through my poem-essay. There was one page for flora and fauna, one page about the mother goose poems and the villagers who inspired those poems, and so on.

AB: Some of the most striking poems in the book are about places – Kashi, Vrindavan, New Zealand (Half Moon Bay), Tiruvannamalai, and Waiheke. These poems are dense with remarkable details, and movement. I must say, one almost feels one is watching the ghats of Manikarnika, or the pristine coastline of Waiheke. One could surmise that these poems become spaces which reproduce these places, shaped by your poetic imagination. Gaston Bachelard, in this regard, has written in his book, The Poetics of Space, that, “space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of imagination”. How is the speaker positioned in these ‘place poems’, and how do these places affect the speaker? Can you explain in reference to any of these poems?

MR: Each of those poems comes from being there. The Kashi poem was originally written for the Divining Dante anthology edited by Priya Sarukkai Chabria – it had to be in three parts, and involve a journey. Dante describes the journey of the soul after death. I was in Kashi that January, wandering, walking the ghats, ten days away from my deadline and had not written anything yet! SoI put pen to paper and thought I would describe the journey of the body/corpse after death. What was around me just jumped into the poem.

Divorce Blooms is sparked by a 2005 phenomena in Waiheke Island, New Zealand. The water surrounding Waiheke had become red in colour due to the algae blooms. This turned into blood and wine in my mind (pathetic fallacy?)

The mountain is the temple, the sacred space of Tiruvannamalai – embodied Shiva – which everyone circumambulates. I conflated this with the Mt. Mandara that was churned with serpent Vasuki by the devas and asuras to obtain the nectar of immortality. And when we circumambulate (snake around), there’s another nectar within ourselves that is churned, and rises.

These places became a part of my body.

AB: What are you currently working on?

MR:  In writing, nothing right now.

AB: Any advice to younger poets (apart from reading more poetry)? 

MR: Let it steep. Work at it.

AB: What are you currently reading?

MR: Adil Jussawalla’s Soliloquies (Thayil Editions, 4^th Estate, HarperCollins)

AB: Is there a message you’d want to convey to the readers of Usawa?

MR: Thank you for supporting the values that Usawa stands for.

AB: Thank you so much for your time and for the wonderful insights, Mani.

Buy Mani Rao’s book, So That You Know, here. Read Ankush’s detailed review of the book here.