“Life has impacted my psyche and my actions!” Irijah’s Raw Soul shared with the world

BY LA SHAWNA GRIFFITH

Twenty-three-year-old Irijah Alkins is a multi-award-winning poet who hails from the beauti-ful island of Barbados.

Alkins has released her debut collection Raw Soul, which is now available in paperback on Amazon stores worldwide.

I had the opportunity to interview Alkins about her book and why she decided to release her poetic musings at such a tender age.

“Five years ago, I started writing about how events in my life impacted my psyche and con-sequently my actions. I did not think about compiling a book until I started to share short po-ems with my friends on my social media. The idea of compiling my works into a book oc-curred to me and I decided to share my journey; from mental mayhem to peace with the world.”

Alkins won awards at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), the lone cultural showcase on the island. She describes the response she received at NIFCA as sur-real.

“The experience was and is still surreal. When I started writing my thoughts on paper, I would have never dreamt that my material would be given the kind of recognition I received at NIFCA. Winning awards encouraged me to continue writing and performing, as well as, giving me confidence in myself as I realized the power of my words. It was humbling and ex-alting.”

The award-winning poet said her debut collection Raw Soul was about the: trials, tribula-tions, and experiences from the time she started writing poetry at eighteen years of age till present.

“As I grew into a young woman, I experienced a plethora of new emotions and feelings. As I felt them, I poured them onto each page. As a result, Raw Soul is a book categorized into emotions. It begins with an introduction into my personality, where readers will have a sneak peek of my mind. There is a chapter on: Anger, Loneliness, Desolation, Love, Infatuation, Pain and concludes with the final chapter Happiness.

Alkins said her poem “Use Me,” in her chapter Vulnerability, is a must-read poem. She ex-plained this piece was for women. However, emotionally the pieces Cavity and The Objec-tive were two extremely hard pieces for her to write because the emotions were raw. “I had just realized I had been deceived.”

In terms of the writing process, the twenty-three-year-old award-winning poet said she be-gan to compile the book on January 1st, 2020. She explained that having her book now available to the world fills her with excitement, yet she is also curious about how her readers will respond to it.

“Raw Soul is my life so now it is available to the world. Everyone is going to know what I have been through and how it impacted me. The feeling of being an author is gratifying and I am very proud of having accomplished such a feat.”

Alkins said in the future she is planning to write the sequel to Raw Soul, which will be dubbed Raw Soul on Fire. It will also be an audiobook as well as a novel in the not too dis-tant future.

For more information on how to purchase her debut collection follow Irijah on Insta-gram @theiriedon.