Overview

Bare Soul is a bilingual poetry collection written by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, translated into Ukrainian by Ihor Pavlyuk, that journeys inward through love, loss, longing, and spiritual awakening, while remaining deeply attentive to the world beyond the self. Written in luminous, image-driven language, the poems move through nature, memory, silence, and desire to explore the contradictions of being human-strength and vulnerability, solitude and union, pain and renewal. Rooted in lyric introspection yet expansive in vision, Bare Soul draws on elemental imagery and philosophical reflection to create a meditative space where personal experience meets universal emotion. Presented here in English and Ukrainian, the collection invites readers across languages and cultures to encounter poetry as a shared act of listening, witnessing, and transformation.

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Reviews

""Bare Soul."" Whose soul? Ever since ""Leaves of Grass"" first appeared in 1855, we find Walt Whitman simultaneously falsely imitated and truly manifesting in America. Who would have thought that his latest local incarnation would be in the body and the soul of an exceptional woman born in Gaya, Bihar, India, where the Buddha experienced Enlightenment? Yet here he is. Kalpna Singh-Chitnis' ""Bare Soul"" is a rapturous 'Song of Herself' erupting in a time/space ..."" Her always accessible words touch deep chords of emotion in readers looking for something more than intellectual play."" Jack Foley, poet, author and critic (USA) ""Magical incantations, mantras, English words that echo the phonemes of ancient tongues-sounds that themselves seem to mirror the eternal world surrounding us: the jungle, the river, the wind... Texts in which something far deeper is perceived than mere ripples on the surface of time or the fleeting shimmer of sunlight on water. Texts as if unearthed from a three-thousand-year-old manuscript by an archaeologist-or perhaps written three thousand years after us."" Matvii Smirnov, poet (U.K.) ""...a true explosion of emotion across space and time, an unbridled freedom of thought, an unrestrained river in the eternal cycle of reincarnation and renewal of the human soul."" Mykhailo Zhaivoron, writer (Ukraine) ""Like Rumi of our time, she is a woman-bridge between East and West, between religions and intuition, between war and hope. Kalpna's voice is as original and intercultural as it is universal and classic."" Ihor Pavlyuk, poet, writer and translator (Ukraine) ""I believe that Kalpna's poetry is not a nine days' wonder, because her poetic quest is towards an ultimate infinity."" Naseer Ahmed Nasir, poet and author (Pakistan) ""Above all, this is a book of love."" Jennifer Resser, poet (USA) ""Covering the contradictory pain and immensity of love, the temptation and torture of sin, and the turmoil of the creative process, the poet searches for self-realization in baring her soul in poems of rich imagery and metaphor connecting her to nature and the whole world."" World Literature Today ""Francis Bacon once said, ""Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested‟. Bare Soul certainly belongs to the third category of the books."" Literary Quest

Author Information

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Калпна Сінг-Чітніс) is an Indian-American poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of seven poetry collections, including ""Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava"" (River Paw Press, 2023), recipient of the prestigious Hryhorii Kochur Award-a State Award of Ukraine-for its bilingual edition translated by Volodymyr Tymchuk, a poet and Lt. Colonel in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and a finalist for the 2023 International Book Awards. Her other notable works include ""Trespassing My Ancestral Lands"" (Finishing Line Press, 2024), shortlisted for the 2024-2025 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize and ""Bare Soul,"" which earned her the 2017 Naji Naaman Literary Prize, along with four poetry collections in Hindi. She curated and edited ""Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope, and Peace,"" shortlisted for the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have been translated into twenty-one languages. Her honors include the Paestum International Poetry Prize, Rajiv Gandhi Global Excellence Award, Bihar Shri, and the Bihar Rajbhasha Parishad Award, given by the Government of Bihar, India. Her poems and poetry film River of Songs, archived in the Lunar Codex, were sent to the Moon's south pole with NASA-SpaceX-Intuitive Machines-Firefly Aerospace missions in 2024-2025. A former lecturer in Political Science, she works as an independent filmmaker in Hollywood. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Life and Legends and serves as an Advocacy Member of the United Nations Association of the USA.Website: www.kalpnasinghchitnis.com. Ihor Pavlyuk (Ігор Павлюк) is a distinguished Ukrainian poet, prose writer, translator, and scholar, holding a Doctorate in Social Communication. A leading researcher at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, he also serves as Professor of Ukrainian Media at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Recipient of the English PEN Award (2013) and the Switzerland Literary Prize (2021), Ihor Pavlyuk is a member of English PEN and the European Society of Authors. His literary career spans continents-he has represented Ukraine at major international literary festivals in Estonia, Georgia, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Italy, the United States, Poland, Turkey, Ireland, Pakistan, England, and the Czech Republic. His works have been translated into numerous languages, including Russian, Belarusian, Polish, English, French, Latvian, Bulgarian, and Japanese. Pavlyuk's poetry and prose have appeared in prestigious international journals such as The Apple Valley Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Asymptote, Gold Dust, The Adirondack Review, The Recusant, Metamorphoses, Eurasia Review, and World Poets Quarterly, among others. He is the subject of two documentary films-Between Bug and God and Voice-and his poems have been read and performed by American and British actors. His collection A Flight over the Black Sea won the Writers in Translation Award from English PEN, earning him international recognition.For more information, visit: https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Pavlyuk

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