Kai Coggin (1980–)

Kai Coggin is a queer, Filipina American poet, author, educator, activist, and Certified Arkansas Master Naturalist. She is the inaugural poet laureate of Hot Springs (Garland County) and the community leader in charge of hosting the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the nation, Wednesday Night Poetry (WNP). By 2024, she had published five full-length books of poetry. She also teaches writing in a variety of venues.

Kai Coggin was born Kimberly Katherine Coggin on January 1, 1980, in Bangkok, Thailand. Her mother, Ester Delacruz Coggin, was raised to be a rice farmer but also traveled throughout her native Philippines reading poetry. Coggin’s mother left the Philippines in 1974 and became an au pair for a diplomat family in Hong Kong, where she met her future husband, Daniel Hungerford Coggin, of Atlanta, Georgia, who was a United States Marine Corps combat reporter in the Vietnam War and a journalist for the Associated Press; he also wrote for Time magazine and became a speechwriter for the United Nations Executive Secretary General of ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific).

After her parents’ divorce in 1987, Coggin emigrated with her mother and younger sister Diana to Texas. Coggin grew up in the southwestern Houston suburb of Alief, helping care for her younger sister while their single mother worked multiple minimum-wage jobs to support them.

Coggin entered Texas A&M University in College Station as a pre-med major studying biomedical science in 1998. She was a member of the student military organization Corps of Cadets and a drummer in the corps marching band; during this time, she experienced extensive hazing as the only female drummer cadet. During her time at A&M, in 1999, a huge annual bonfire on campus collapsed, killing twelve students and injuring twenty-seven. In her junior year, Coggin was reported and expelled from the Corps of Cadets for violating the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy when she fell in love with another female cadet. Coggin remained at the university, changing her major and earning a BA in English, poetry, and creative writing in 2003.

Unsure how to make a career out of poetry, Coggin earned an emergency teaching certification and started as a ninth- and tenth-grade English teacher at Alief Taylor High School in 2003, in the same school district where she was raised. After only five years of teaching, Coggin was recognized as Teacher of the Year and District Secondary Teacher of the Year, and she was a top-five finalist for Regional Teacher of the Year out of 85,000 teachers. After famous writer Sandra Cisneros visited with Coggin’s students for a project, Coggin retired from teaching to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time poet.

In 2008, Coggin met the woman who would become her wife, retired esoteric teacher, lecturer, visual artist, and master naturalist Joann Saraydarian. Coggin chose the new name Kai as part of a spiritual rebirth. In 2012, Coggin and her partner moved from Houston to Arkansas. Coggin had mostly set aside her own writing while teaching, but the urge to find her way back to poetry returned after the death of her father in 2011. Coggin started attending Wednesday Night Poetry in 2013, and Bud Kenny, WNP’s founder, became a poetic father figure to her.

From 2014 to 2018, Coggin led a low-cost “Words and Wine” night at the local arts nonprofit Emergent Arts to teach adults how to write poetry in a fun, informal environment. In 2015, Coggin became a teaching artist of creative writing and an instructional specialist in poetry curriculum on the Arts in Education Roster for the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning for the Arts.

On February 6, 2019, WNP’s thirtieth anniversary, Kenny asked Coggin if she would, “take WNP into the future” and become the new official host of the series.

To carry on WNP during COVID-19, Coggin collected the recordings of individual poets reading their work, added her own, and compiled them into a single upload; she posted it online at 6:30 p.m., the same time the group would have met in person each Wednesday. “We didn’t miss a week…and it created this sense of togetherness when we were all forced to be apart,” Coggin said. Coggin opened the poetry night to locals as well as inviting poets from around the nation and world. “It grew and grew each week. More and more people sent in videos each week, from California to New York City, even poets internationally got word. The New York Times caught wind of it, PBS, Medium. Word spread. Our legacy continued.” More than 5,000 videos were uploaded while Coggin was hosting the event virtually.

Coggin’s work has been published in a variety of print and online journals, as well as various anthologies. Coggin’s publications include five books of poetry and one poetry album: Periscope Heart (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014); Wingspan (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016); debut spoken-word album Silhouette (self-produced in GarageBand, 2017); Incandescent, published with Little Rock (Pulaski County) LGBTQ+ publisher Sibling Rivalry Press (2019); Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press, 2021); and Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Two of Coggin’s five books were released to coincide with that year’s Earth Day, and another was released on November 11. Except for the NASA photograph of the Pillars of Creation taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (featured on the cover of her fourth book), all of Coggin’s book covers were painted by her wife. Of the fourth book’s cover, Coggin said, “The Universe painted that one.” Themes in Coggin’s work include activism, politics, spirituality, and her various intersectional identities. As she has stated, “Humanity is suffering right now, and it is the responsibility of the poets and the artists to acknowledge that suffering, but also to provide a beacon of hope.”

Coggin was twice named Best Poet in Arkansas by the Arkansas Times (2020, 2023), was nominated for poet laureate of Arkansas by outgoing poet laureate Jo McDougall (2022), and was nominated for Hot Springs Woman of the Year (2022). Coggin was awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education for her work in bringing poetry to more than 3,500 K–12 students a year around the state. She was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service, a $10,000 prize. Ten of Coggin’s poems were chosen to go to the moon with the Lunar Codex project.

On February 1, 2023, Pat McCabe, mayor of Hot Springs, appointed Coggin the first poet laureate for the City of Hot Springs.

Coggin was named a 2023 CATALYZE Grant Fellow and a 2024 INTERCHANGE Socially Engaged Practice Grant Fellow, awarded by the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Mellon Foundation. She has judged poetry contests for the CALS Six Bridges Book Festival and taught advanced poetry writing master classes through the CALS Writing Circle. She also teaches adult creative writing classes online with national writing organizations. Coggin is editor at large at SWWIM and Terrain(.)org and associate editor at the Rise Up Review. She has served on the board of directors of the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance, the International Women’s Writing Guild, and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

In 2024, Coggin was awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for her civic project Sharing Tree Space, aimed at connecting four cohorts of marginalized teenagers with the natural world by taking them on poetry hikes within Hot Springs National Park. In August 2024, she performed at the National Book Festival in Washington DC and spoke at the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Arts. In October 2024, she was a headlining poet at the Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey.

Coggin lives with her wife and their dogs in the Ouachita National Forest.

For additional information:
Bates, Kathy M., and Garrett Long “Interview: Kai Coggin.” Arkana, March 2022. https://arkanamag.org/2022/05/02/interview-kai-coggin/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Bryan, Wayne. “Poet Finds Her Work Flows Well from Hot Springs.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 20, 2014. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2014/jul/20/poet-finds-her-work-flows-well-hot-springs/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Ford, Kody. “Kai Coggin Talks Poetry, Process, and Her Upcoming Collection.” Idle Class Mag, August 13, 2014. http://idleclassmag.com/kai-coggin-talks-poetry-process-upcoming-collection/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Harrison, Eric E. “Hot Springs Poet Kai Coggin Chosen for Don Munro Award.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 20, 2023. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/oct/30/entertainment-hot-springs-poet-chosen-for-don/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Hopkinson, Trish. “Trish Hopkinson Chats with Kai Coggin about Her Latest Book.” Tell, Tell Poetry, December 17, 2021. https://www.telltellpoetry.com/trish-hopkinson-chats-with-kai-coggin-about-her-latest-book-release/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

“Interview with Kai Coggin and Julie E. Bloemeke.” Tinderbox Poetry Journal, January 2022. https://tinderboxpoetry.com/interview-with-kai-coggin-and-julie-e-bloemeke (accessed October 24, 2024).

Kai Coggin: Poet & Author. https://www.kaicoggin.com/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Lezra, Billy. “In Conversation with Kai Coggin.” Rough Cut Press. https://roughcutpress.com/kai-coggin/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

———. “Toward the Infinitesimal: In Conversation with Kai Coggin, Part II.” Rough Cut Press. https://roughcutpress.com/kai-coggin-pt2/v (accessed October 24, 2024).

Lorraine, Nina (Christy). “An Interview with Poet Kai Coggin.” Literary Librarian, February 28, 2019. https://theliterarylibrariansite.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/interview-an-interview-with-poet-kai-coggin/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

Schweig, Catherine L. “Interview with Kai Coggin.” The Women Behind the Poetry, August 5, 2014. https://thewomenbehindthepoetry.blogspot.com/2014/08/interview-with-kai-coggin.html. (accessed October 24, 2024).

Taylor, Mary Ruth. “All of My Eyes Are Open.” Arkansas Times, December 2023, pp. 60–63. Online at https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2023/12/01/all-of-my-eyes-are-open-hot-springs-poet-kai-coggin-finds-purpose-in-speaking-truth-to-power (accessed October 24, 2024).

“Weapons of Light: Our Interview with Kai Coggin about Her Book Mining for Stardust from FlowerSong Press.” The Poetry Salon (TPS), October 14, 2021. https://www.thepoetrysalon.com/tps/2021/10/14/weapons-of-light-our-interview-with-kai-coggin-about-her-book-mining-for-stardust-from-flowersong-press/ (accessed October 24, 2024).

J. Jobe
CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas