I read it. I write it. I teach it. I breathe it.
poetry by Kai Coggin
Kai Coggin is the author of two full-length collections, PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants, 2014) and WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016), as well as a spoken word album called SILHOUETTE (2017). Her third full-length collection INCANDESCENT is forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press in 2019. Kai’s poetry has been nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016.
Kai teaches an adult creative writing class called Words & Wine at Emergent Arts. She is also a teaching artist on the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education Roster and with Arkansas Learning Through the Arts (ALTTA), specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth around the state.
Kai teaches an adult creative writing class called Words & Wine at Emergent Arts. She is also a teaching artist on the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education Roster and with Arkansas Learning Through the Arts (ALTTA), specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth around the state.
Dear Kai,
How do you maintain your love of poetry?
Poetry is a constant in my life; it’s the lens through which I navigate this world. It is my love language, by truest voice. I don’t maintain it. It maintains me. I read it. I write it. I teach it. I breathe it.
Poetry allows me to internalize and process an experience or situation, either personal or global, and run it through my spirit in a way that can ultimately transmute that experience into deeper understanding, truth, light, and beauty. Even in the poems that I write through a valley of darkness and pain, there is always a source of enlightenment or growth when I relive it through the mechanics of a poem, when I play with the rhythm of a moment, when I experiment with the sound of it, the taste, the touch in words.
When a poem comes through me, it is something that cannot be held back. It is a wild need to rush to a keyboard or grab a pen and pour out whatever energy needs to be spilled across that blank page. It is magic to me, creating something tangible out of the invisible. In fact, here is a poem about that process.
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⌘ More Like Magic It’s an art really, more like sculpting than anything else I can think of, this p u l l i n g down of invisible clouds into words on paper, nothing, suddenly transformed into meaning, more like magic, perhaps, than art, more like sorcery, perhaps, than work, I can keep my head down, as my fingers move across keys, a heart spell casting light onto quiet, and when I look up to the glowing hum screen, there is a story, a character, the movement of wind, a willow tree, a plump robin, a lover, the shape of her face, her hips, her mouth, ten thousand stars, anything that I can dream of can flash its way into the imagination of a poem, a spark born of words, delivered from consciousness and a combination of thought and sound, bouncing echoes of words in my head as I hear them typed out drum click drum click click. I hear myself talking making shapes out of air, tilting my wrists into dance, cupping my fingers around tangibility newly formed from nothing, and now a poem suddenly IS. It’s an art really, more like magic than anything else I can think of. |
You were born in Thailand, raised in Houston and now living in Arkansas. What impact have these communities had on you as a poet? Dealing with the mundane reality, what helps you adapt easily from one setting to another?
Bangkok is a long-fleeted memory that I could never really pin down. I existed there from birth to age seven, but there are no solid memories that I can shape into being. I’ve written about it, this disconnect, this distance, this hole of loss, this lack of birthplace connection. I went to a British International School. We had a big white sheepdog named Emily. My father was a speech writer with the United Nations. My mother was busy mothering me and my little sister. There were light festivals, and holidays, Halloween costumes, and first days of school… but I have no recollection of any of it beyond false flashes that I piece together from photographs. Funny what trauma and loss can do to memory. Or not really funny at all.
When my parents divorced, my father stayed in Bangkok and my mother, little sister, and I moved to Houston, TX. When we flew over the ocean, it seems my memories fell out of the bottom of the airplane into the nameless water. When we hovered over the airport, I imagined we would be greeted with cowboys and Indians, dusty tumbleweeds blowing across the tarmac. It was nothing like that, but it was the start of a new life, a start of a new cognizance.
Houston is the soil where the seed of me was actually planted, watered, sprouted, and bloomed into something, someone. As setting in my writing, it does not come out by name much; I don’t have an ode to the streets per se, but Houston is woven into the fabric of my life experiences, my pains and joys, my growth, my shame, my triumphs. When I think of my hometown, it is Houston. The irony of the place in regards to my poetry is that, when I lived there from 1987 to 2012 (besides a few years away at college) I hardly wrote much poetry at all. I mean, I majored in poetry in school, and got my creative writing degree, but even when I graduated from college, I said, “ok, well what the hell am I going to do with a degree in poetry?” I went back to Houston and taught high school English for 5 years, and it turns out I was really great at it. I even won Teacher of the Year, but poetry still burned deep in me, a fire that wanted to find the oxygen to breathe and come to life.
It wasn’t until moving to Hot Springs National Park, AR that the words sparked up again. I live in the valley of a small mountain, surrounded with trees and sky and wildlife. There are 3 million acres of national forest in this state, and some of the largest and cleanest lakes in the country. I could not help but start writing again when surrounded with all of this beauty and water, like 4000 year old volcanic water bubbling up from springs to the surface of this quaint city.
Hot Springs is also a small but vibrant arts community, with a very receptive love of poetry and visual arts. Actually, the longest running open mic in the country is right here in this little tourist destination, and there has been poetry read at a microphone every Wednesday night in downtown since February 1st 1989, without EVER missing a single week… over 1540 consecutive Wednesdays in a row, 30 years this February. This Wednesday Night Poetry community is what gave me a safe place to land when my poet wings were just learning how to fly. I would try to bring in a new poem every week, and it served as a goal to write.
Now after 5 years of making this poetry community the church for my words, the founder/host and my poetry Dad, Bud Kenny, is going to pass the torch… to me. On the 30th anniversary, I will be the new host for this amazing weekly spilling of heart and words and music, and I could not be more honored and humbled with the trust of this legacy. If you are ever in Hot Springs National Park, come up to the mic. We’re here every Wednesday night at Kollective Coffee+Tea.
In (not so) short, every new place has been in line with the purpose and flow of where my life needed to be at that time. As a poet, all I can do wherever I am, is look around, look deeply, and take it all in.
Knowing that you have been named Teacher of the Year in Houston and have been a beloved teacher to so many students, can you share with us some key lessons that have helped as an educator?
After winning Teacher of the Year, I retired from teaching in 2009 to pursue poetry (my dream) full time. In the space of time that I spent as a teacher, it was evident that I was doing something “right” with the kids, because they were so engaged, would trust me so much with their hearts and vulnerabilities, and they were learning! Looking back on it now, it was all of the lessons that I did that were outside-the-box that reached them - taking them outside for poetry and drum circles, building a life-sized balcony for Romeo and Juliet, having Sandra Cisneros visit my students (which is a long and beautiful story in and of itself).
It was about connecting to their hearts, not force-feeding testing strategies that mattered. It was person to person communication and trust. It was HUMOR. It was being myself. It was being a role model in the way that I carried out my life outside the classroom with acceptance and tolerance and respect for all. It was creating a safe space where they could be themselves, a space where they could come to me for anything knowing they would be understood and nurtured.
Yes, along the way they learned about grammar, and read great literature, and wrote essays, and even learned how to be successful on that dreaded test, but it was the HEART that mattered most. A real teacher teaches not with the mind, but with the heart.
When I retired to become a poet, my students saw that I was putting my money where my mouth was, going after my dream. They were so excited for me, even though it meant me leaving the school. Ten years later, I am still friends with hundreds of them on Facebook and we keep in touch about their lives, their careers. They still come to me for advice.
They see that I went after my goal to become a poet, and that I am successful with two published books and another on the way. I am doing it. I am hustling and living my dream. By going out on that scary limb ten years ago, I hope that I gave them the courage to chase their own destinies.
What type of feedback have you received from your students that have encouraged you?
I still get random letters from former students all these years later. Just the other day, I received a DM on facebook from a former student who said she was reaching out to thank me for making such a difference in her life and that I had shaped the person that she wanted to be. She told me she is currently running in the 2019 election for Houston City Council. Wow, right?! You never know when just one kind act, one word, one look of compassion and understanding can literally SAVE A LIFE.
Presently, besides my work as a poet, I am a Teaching Artist with Arkansas Learning Through the Arts and the Arkansas Arts Council. It’s the best of both world, really, because I get the opportunity to teach and I only have to teach POETRY! Showing young people that they can grow up to have a career in the arts is really meaningful for them, and gives so many kids a new sense of hope that they can make a life out of their artistic passions.
I travel around to schools around the state, and work with students from 2nd grade up to high school, and show them the value of poetry as a means of expression. I’ve told thousands of kids this: “POETRY IS A SAFE PLACE TO PUT YOUR FEELINGS.” If that is the only thing they remember from my week with them, that’s great, but so often many of them open up and write these incredible and personal poems that reveal so much insight into their individual stories. The feedback I get from them is through their poems; it is in this opening up of a young person to this vehicle of expression and seeing them actually take the wheel. It is seeing these kids read their poems out-loud to their classmates and a new wave of mutual respect and trust falls across their peers.
Poetry can change the behavioral climate of a room, spread empathy, reshapes atoms. I believe in its magic. Feedback also comes from speaking to teachers who have never seen that side of their students, and after a few days of poetry with me, they are different, deeper writers. They find their voice.
Adults in my adult creative writing class, Words & Wine, are no different. They have grown and changed and opened up and healed through poetry reading and writing poetry around my table. Sometimes we sit around and discuss a line of a poem for half and hour, expounding on its perfection and just gushing with appreciation for the beauty and mechanics. Like totally GEEK OUT! It moments like this; bringing this appreciation of poetry to people of all ages who otherwise would not have that exposure… that’s when the Universe winks at me, and says “Kai, you are right where you should be."
Bangkok is a long-fleeted memory that I could never really pin down. I existed there from birth to age seven, but there are no solid memories that I can shape into being. I’ve written about it, this disconnect, this distance, this hole of loss, this lack of birthplace connection. I went to a British International School. We had a big white sheepdog named Emily. My father was a speech writer with the United Nations. My mother was busy mothering me and my little sister. There were light festivals, and holidays, Halloween costumes, and first days of school… but I have no recollection of any of it beyond false flashes that I piece together from photographs. Funny what trauma and loss can do to memory. Or not really funny at all.
When my parents divorced, my father stayed in Bangkok and my mother, little sister, and I moved to Houston, TX. When we flew over the ocean, it seems my memories fell out of the bottom of the airplane into the nameless water. When we hovered over the airport, I imagined we would be greeted with cowboys and Indians, dusty tumbleweeds blowing across the tarmac. It was nothing like that, but it was the start of a new life, a start of a new cognizance.
Houston is the soil where the seed of me was actually planted, watered, sprouted, and bloomed into something, someone. As setting in my writing, it does not come out by name much; I don’t have an ode to the streets per se, but Houston is woven into the fabric of my life experiences, my pains and joys, my growth, my shame, my triumphs. When I think of my hometown, it is Houston. The irony of the place in regards to my poetry is that, when I lived there from 1987 to 2012 (besides a few years away at college) I hardly wrote much poetry at all. I mean, I majored in poetry in school, and got my creative writing degree, but even when I graduated from college, I said, “ok, well what the hell am I going to do with a degree in poetry?” I went back to Houston and taught high school English for 5 years, and it turns out I was really great at it. I even won Teacher of the Year, but poetry still burned deep in me, a fire that wanted to find the oxygen to breathe and come to life.
It wasn’t until moving to Hot Springs National Park, AR that the words sparked up again. I live in the valley of a small mountain, surrounded with trees and sky and wildlife. There are 3 million acres of national forest in this state, and some of the largest and cleanest lakes in the country. I could not help but start writing again when surrounded with all of this beauty and water, like 4000 year old volcanic water bubbling up from springs to the surface of this quaint city.
Hot Springs is also a small but vibrant arts community, with a very receptive love of poetry and visual arts. Actually, the longest running open mic in the country is right here in this little tourist destination, and there has been poetry read at a microphone every Wednesday night in downtown since February 1st 1989, without EVER missing a single week… over 1540 consecutive Wednesdays in a row, 30 years this February. This Wednesday Night Poetry community is what gave me a safe place to land when my poet wings were just learning how to fly. I would try to bring in a new poem every week, and it served as a goal to write.
Now after 5 years of making this poetry community the church for my words, the founder/host and my poetry Dad, Bud Kenny, is going to pass the torch… to me. On the 30th anniversary, I will be the new host for this amazing weekly spilling of heart and words and music, and I could not be more honored and humbled with the trust of this legacy. If you are ever in Hot Springs National Park, come up to the mic. We’re here every Wednesday night at Kollective Coffee+Tea.
In (not so) short, every new place has been in line with the purpose and flow of where my life needed to be at that time. As a poet, all I can do wherever I am, is look around, look deeply, and take it all in.
Knowing that you have been named Teacher of the Year in Houston and have been a beloved teacher to so many students, can you share with us some key lessons that have helped as an educator?
After winning Teacher of the Year, I retired from teaching in 2009 to pursue poetry (my dream) full time. In the space of time that I spent as a teacher, it was evident that I was doing something “right” with the kids, because they were so engaged, would trust me so much with their hearts and vulnerabilities, and they were learning! Looking back on it now, it was all of the lessons that I did that were outside-the-box that reached them - taking them outside for poetry and drum circles, building a life-sized balcony for Romeo and Juliet, having Sandra Cisneros visit my students (which is a long and beautiful story in and of itself).
It was about connecting to their hearts, not force-feeding testing strategies that mattered. It was person to person communication and trust. It was HUMOR. It was being myself. It was being a role model in the way that I carried out my life outside the classroom with acceptance and tolerance and respect for all. It was creating a safe space where they could be themselves, a space where they could come to me for anything knowing they would be understood and nurtured.
Yes, along the way they learned about grammar, and read great literature, and wrote essays, and even learned how to be successful on that dreaded test, but it was the HEART that mattered most. A real teacher teaches not with the mind, but with the heart.
When I retired to become a poet, my students saw that I was putting my money where my mouth was, going after my dream. They were so excited for me, even though it meant me leaving the school. Ten years later, I am still friends with hundreds of them on Facebook and we keep in touch about their lives, their careers. They still come to me for advice.
They see that I went after my goal to become a poet, and that I am successful with two published books and another on the way. I am doing it. I am hustling and living my dream. By going out on that scary limb ten years ago, I hope that I gave them the courage to chase their own destinies.
What type of feedback have you received from your students that have encouraged you?
I still get random letters from former students all these years later. Just the other day, I received a DM on facebook from a former student who said she was reaching out to thank me for making such a difference in her life and that I had shaped the person that she wanted to be. She told me she is currently running in the 2019 election for Houston City Council. Wow, right?! You never know when just one kind act, one word, one look of compassion and understanding can literally SAVE A LIFE.
Presently, besides my work as a poet, I am a Teaching Artist with Arkansas Learning Through the Arts and the Arkansas Arts Council. It’s the best of both world, really, because I get the opportunity to teach and I only have to teach POETRY! Showing young people that they can grow up to have a career in the arts is really meaningful for them, and gives so many kids a new sense of hope that they can make a life out of their artistic passions.
I travel around to schools around the state, and work with students from 2nd grade up to high school, and show them the value of poetry as a means of expression. I’ve told thousands of kids this: “POETRY IS A SAFE PLACE TO PUT YOUR FEELINGS.” If that is the only thing they remember from my week with them, that’s great, but so often many of them open up and write these incredible and personal poems that reveal so much insight into their individual stories. The feedback I get from them is through their poems; it is in this opening up of a young person to this vehicle of expression and seeing them actually take the wheel. It is seeing these kids read their poems out-loud to their classmates and a new wave of mutual respect and trust falls across their peers.
Poetry can change the behavioral climate of a room, spread empathy, reshapes atoms. I believe in its magic. Feedback also comes from speaking to teachers who have never seen that side of their students, and after a few days of poetry with me, they are different, deeper writers. They find their voice.
Adults in my adult creative writing class, Words & Wine, are no different. They have grown and changed and opened up and healed through poetry reading and writing poetry around my table. Sometimes we sit around and discuss a line of a poem for half and hour, expounding on its perfection and just gushing with appreciation for the beauty and mechanics. Like totally GEEK OUT! It moments like this; bringing this appreciation of poetry to people of all ages who otherwise would not have that exposure… that’s when the Universe winks at me, and says “Kai, you are right where you should be."
How do you keep focused on your goals as a writer, poet, educator despite the many distractions of modern life?
How do any of us keep focused with all the distractions of modern life, are you kidding me? Facebook is like crack. And as an independent freelancing creative type, I also NEED it in order to promote my work and to get opportunities to lecture, get invited to readings, and sell my books. So focusing on my goals actually IS hand in hand with scrolling past cat videos.
However, when I am struck with the need to write a poem, there is nothing that can take my attention away from it. The energy and fire of creating comes through me with precision. In those moments, I am most alive. In those moments, I am safe… from cat videos.
What is your attitude towards the effect of social media on artists and writers’ careers?
I am friends with so many poets on social media. Only a few times have I seen anything negative come out from interactions online, and usually it is because a person did something morally reprehensible and is being “outed” for it in the community. It can get ugly. People are brave behind their keyboards. Careers can get affected. I try to stay away from the flagrant toxicity that occasionally oozes out, but sometimes situations also can be used as learning opportunities to see, for example, what privilege allows to certain members of the poetry world that it does not allow to others. The recent debacle in The Nation comes to mind.
All in all, I think the effect of social media has really changed how we consume art and writing. Not negatively, but just differently. Everything is readily available but the tangibility is colder. The visceral feel of pages of books in your fingers is replaced with a scrolling thumb on a white screen. But poetry engagement is at a supposed high. People are reading it, sharing it, being exposed to it more. People still go to museums, but great works of art by the Masters are also being turned into meme backgrounds. It’s where we are as a society now, though, driven in this technological hyper-consumption perhaps at only a surface level most of the time.
As the writers and artists and musicians even, we are forced to learn to harness the power of the internet and social media if we do not want to fall to the wayside of being completely obsolete. Society sees the world through these handheld little windows. We must saddle our Atlantis. Or write, paint, sing into a void.
How can you explain being a “conscious poet”?
Being a conscious poet means that I strive to not only tell the narrative of my own ego-driven physical trudging through karmic experiences as a queer woman of color on earth, but I also strive to lend my voices to higher worlds, to higher ideals of human endeavor, to the boundless limits of the Human Spirit. There is an omnipresence or universal thread that we, as creators, can tap into if our work serves to help humanity. Sometimes that thread feels far away or like a dream. Sometimes I am the golden spool itself.
Who are some poets you find inspiring day in and day out?
Jane Hirshfield, Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Andrea Gibson, Rumi, Maya Angelou, Kaveh Akbar, Anne Sexton, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Aimee Nezhukumamathil, Layli LongSoldier, Nikky Finney, Danez Smith, Chen Chen, Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Jeanette Winterson, Ada Limón, Ai, Claudia Rankine, Nayyirah Waheed, so many many many more… and all of my personal and cyber-personal friends who are poets, who lift me up with their work and their dedication to stringing letters together and breaking lines to bring about beauty, or change, or light.
Do you have any upcoming poetry projects you are excited about?
Yes! My third full-length poetry collection Incandescent is being published in 2019, with the amazingly beautiful humans at Sibling Rivalry Press, right here in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bryan Borland and Seth Pennington, as well as their whole team, have been publishing incredible collections by some really amazing poets, especially marginalized voices who are underrepresented in the mainstream. They are my dream press for this collection, and I am so thrilled to be in the SRP family.
A fourth full-length which has yet to be officially titled will also be published in 2019, so in the writer world, I’m having twins! (Send gifts.) Stay tuned on social media for the big reveal of that collection coming soon. (See how we use social media?)
What are your go to techniques in succeeding against daily struggles and what do you do to “BeatTheBlues"?
To beat the blues, I write. I read. I go out in nature, and not-so-skinny dip in a lake. I take exorbitant amounts of photos. I go to the gym and get my endorphins all pumping. I play my drums, and tune my ukulele and strum chords fruitlessly until I realize I still don’t know how to play it. I cuddle with a couple of the cutest pups in the whole world, Genghis and Layla. I sit with thoughts of gratitude for how much I have been blessed with, in the people who love me. Particularly one. She knows who she is.
Thank you!
How do any of us keep focused with all the distractions of modern life, are you kidding me? Facebook is like crack. And as an independent freelancing creative type, I also NEED it in order to promote my work and to get opportunities to lecture, get invited to readings, and sell my books. So focusing on my goals actually IS hand in hand with scrolling past cat videos.
However, when I am struck with the need to write a poem, there is nothing that can take my attention away from it. The energy and fire of creating comes through me with precision. In those moments, I am most alive. In those moments, I am safe… from cat videos.
What is your attitude towards the effect of social media on artists and writers’ careers?
I am friends with so many poets on social media. Only a few times have I seen anything negative come out from interactions online, and usually it is because a person did something morally reprehensible and is being “outed” for it in the community. It can get ugly. People are brave behind their keyboards. Careers can get affected. I try to stay away from the flagrant toxicity that occasionally oozes out, but sometimes situations also can be used as learning opportunities to see, for example, what privilege allows to certain members of the poetry world that it does not allow to others. The recent debacle in The Nation comes to mind.
All in all, I think the effect of social media has really changed how we consume art and writing. Not negatively, but just differently. Everything is readily available but the tangibility is colder. The visceral feel of pages of books in your fingers is replaced with a scrolling thumb on a white screen. But poetry engagement is at a supposed high. People are reading it, sharing it, being exposed to it more. People still go to museums, but great works of art by the Masters are also being turned into meme backgrounds. It’s where we are as a society now, though, driven in this technological hyper-consumption perhaps at only a surface level most of the time.
As the writers and artists and musicians even, we are forced to learn to harness the power of the internet and social media if we do not want to fall to the wayside of being completely obsolete. Society sees the world through these handheld little windows. We must saddle our Atlantis. Or write, paint, sing into a void.
How can you explain being a “conscious poet”?
Being a conscious poet means that I strive to not only tell the narrative of my own ego-driven physical trudging through karmic experiences as a queer woman of color on earth, but I also strive to lend my voices to higher worlds, to higher ideals of human endeavor, to the boundless limits of the Human Spirit. There is an omnipresence or universal thread that we, as creators, can tap into if our work serves to help humanity. Sometimes that thread feels far away or like a dream. Sometimes I am the golden spool itself.
Who are some poets you find inspiring day in and day out?
Jane Hirshfield, Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Andrea Gibson, Rumi, Maya Angelou, Kaveh Akbar, Anne Sexton, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Aimee Nezhukumamathil, Layli LongSoldier, Nikky Finney, Danez Smith, Chen Chen, Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Jeanette Winterson, Ada Limón, Ai, Claudia Rankine, Nayyirah Waheed, so many many many more… and all of my personal and cyber-personal friends who are poets, who lift me up with their work and their dedication to stringing letters together and breaking lines to bring about beauty, or change, or light.
Do you have any upcoming poetry projects you are excited about?
Yes! My third full-length poetry collection Incandescent is being published in 2019, with the amazingly beautiful humans at Sibling Rivalry Press, right here in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bryan Borland and Seth Pennington, as well as their whole team, have been publishing incredible collections by some really amazing poets, especially marginalized voices who are underrepresented in the mainstream. They are my dream press for this collection, and I am so thrilled to be in the SRP family.
A fourth full-length which has yet to be officially titled will also be published in 2019, so in the writer world, I’m having twins! (Send gifts.) Stay tuned on social media for the big reveal of that collection coming soon. (See how we use social media?)
What are your go to techniques in succeeding against daily struggles and what do you do to “BeatTheBlues"?
To beat the blues, I write. I read. I go out in nature, and not-so-skinny dip in a lake. I take exorbitant amounts of photos. I go to the gym and get my endorphins all pumping. I play my drums, and tune my ukulele and strum chords fruitlessly until I realize I still don’t know how to play it. I cuddle with a couple of the cutest pups in the whole world, Genghis and Layla. I sit with thoughts of gratitude for how much I have been blessed with, in the people who love me. Particularly one. She knows who she is.
Thank you!