Unheard by Bhavini Bhargava

I’ve spent most of my adult life with my nose buried in poetry.
Not the Instagram kind. Not the “roses are red” kind either.
The dense, elusive, line-break-sensitive kind.
Poetry with footnotes.
Poetry that requires a glass of wine and an annotated copy of The Norton Anthology just to survive it.

So imagine my quiet skepticism when I came across Unheard, a slim volume by a young writer—Bhavini Bhargava, no less, whose résumé reads like a wunderkind’s Wikipedia page: elite athlete, university scholar, now poet.

I expected competence. What I got was clarity.
I expected potential. What I got was presence.

Let’s be honest:
The academic world teaches you to privilege complexity.
To reward poets who can mystify you into admiration.

But Unheard is doing something almost rebellious.
It is simple—on purpose.
Like a tightrope strung between teenage fragility and adult awareness.

And Bhargava?
She walks it with raw-footed grace.

Her metaphors are modest.
Her structure, often unadorned.
She does not chase lyricism for applause.
She lets silence punctuate her truths.

In “For the Girl Who Looks Fine (But Isn’t),”
she distills what twenty pages of theory cannot touch:
the emotional taxation of high-functioning invisibility.

There’s restraint here.
The kind that shows maturity.
She could have been performative.
She could have dressed these poems up in obscure allusions,
but she chose to be honest instead.

Honesty, as it turns out, is the most difficult meter to master.

As a scholar, I’m trained to look for lineage.
So yes—I see shades of Plath’s vulnerability.
Echoes of Rupi Kaur’s brevity (but without the commodified pain).
Perhaps even Dickinson’s sense of internal exile.

But Bhargava is not imitating.
She’s translating—her own story, her own pace.

She has invented her own poetic space—
one foot in the arena of competition,
one foot in the soft, unsure soil of adolescence.

This book is not for those looking for technical flamboyance.
It is for those who’ve ever sat in a school hallway wondering if their best would ever be enough.
For those who’ve smiled at teachers while slowly unraveling inside.
For those who thought achievement might cure loneliness.

It doesn’t.
Bhargava knows this.
She writes it anyway.

In closing?
Unheard is not a debut that demands literary awe.
It’s one that earns emotional trust.

And for me, after reading thousands of lines about death, god, war, and abstract longing,
Bhavini Bhargava’s quiet heartbreak about pressure and personhood
was the poem I didn’t know I needed.

Sometimes, the best verse doesn’t knock on the door.
It slips you a note when no one’s looking.

And in that note, it simply says,
“I see you.”

Voyages of Verses Book Award

This book is a winner of the Voyages of Verses Book Award, a recognition for books that expand the horizon of what literature can achieve. We honor works that challenge preconceived notions, broaden worldviews, and celebrate the rich blend of voices that shape our global narrative. Whether it’s a novel that immerses you in a different culture, a collection of poems that captures the essence of shared humanity, or a nonfiction account that sparks critical thought, the Voyages of Verses Book Award celebrates stories that invite exploration and discovery.

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