Kai Coggin
Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs and author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE grant fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.
Recently awarded the Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award, the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021—awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, The Night Heron Barks, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Pirene’s Fountain, About Place Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor-at-Large at SWIMM, Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
Praise for Mother of Other Kingdoms:
Mother of Other Kingdoms is a marvel, an intricate tapestry that captures the essence of motherhood in its diverse forms, offering solace, reflection, and a profound connection to the world. Coggin's poetry paints a vivid portrait of motherhood as both a noun and a verb, a force that nurtures not only the human experience but also the wild landscapes that cradle it. With each carefully crafted line, she embraces the wonders and challenges of being a mother, particularly in a world touched by loss. From the gentle guidance extended to the natural world—”Here—let me carry you”—to the intimate connections with bees, caterpillars, red-winged blackbirds, and cherished souls of departed ones, Coggin's exploration is a celebration of the inherent bond between humanity and nature. In the poem “Is This Grief," she eloquently captures the aftermath of death, acknowledging the transformative power of love that transcends realms, declaring, “we are of different worlds now, two kingdoms, two planes / . . . love has no other name.” In this tightly woven collection, Coggin beautifully illustrates that amidst inevitable change, "A mother is quietly building something out of nothing.” Resilient, infinite, and harmonious, “The natural world still finds a way to sing.”
Angelique Zobitz, author of SERAPHIM
Kai Coggin offers us—not a book, but a “house of windows,” a prism of looking from an author who declares: “All of my eyes are open.” Through Mother of Other Kingdoms, we see both “a biosphere of bombing” and the “holiness of the infinitesimal.” Each poem is populated with the specific beauty of the world—with jewel green Monarch chrysalises, Japanese persimmons, or even the pee of hummingbird. Populated, too, with pistols, pandemic losses, and the specific “biography of dark” Coggin herself has lived, the collection ultimately leans into healing, toward feeding our “poem-hungry hearts” and “spinning the moments holy.”
Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light & Founder of Indigenous Nations Poets
Kai Coggin's Mother of Other Kingdoms is a beautiful collection of poems that skillfully weaves together love, grief, and awe—and always with an admiration for nature. Through a lens of tender wonder, Coggin explores this nurturing relationship with the beings of the natural world, presenting a powerful and enlightening perspective on unconventional motherhood and her role as a guardian. These gorgeous ecopoems remind us of our intimate relationship with the earth by bridging the gap between the human and natural worlds. Throughout this exquisite book, Coggin’s gifts for finding beauty in a troubled world are plentiful—to see the grace in the deer that nibble her flowers, in the caterpillar named “little monster” eating the fiddle-leaf fig. Yes, these are love poems to the world—to an old dog, a garden of miracles, a treasured wife, queer youth, a grosbeak, the moon, even ramen noodles—and through it all, we revel in her love. Coggin's voice offers a comforting wisdom, a caring, and an invitation to find flickers of light in a dark world. This book is not your regular read—it’s a journey to rekindle your own sense of wonder, to transform you in all the best ways. Mother of Other Kingdoms is a collection that will hold you Reader, and say, Don’t worry, honey . . . You are holy. / You are sacred. / You are enough. These are poems you’ll want to read again, poems that say: know / I love you. Mother of Other Kingdoms is a book I never want to set down.
Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
Whenever I read a poem by Kai Coggin, I feel something transcendent—her words resonate and reverberate within my soul. She keeps elevating us. A poem is a sacred place, a quiet agreement between the poet and the reader, the spoken word and the receiver—it is indeed holy. The hum in my chest from a moan, the flesh popping between the snaps in my fingers, my whole body moved through these poems. Kai is indeed a Mother of Other Kingdoms and while reading her offerings, I became a daughter of other moons, a spiritual tether bound to her poems, a line that will never break. “A mother is quietly building something out of nothing” as most mothers do, and Kai’s words build crescendos in my spirit, as I recall her lines singing through my daily life. Between each line there is a symphony of nature and resistance, the harmonizing tension and release of a poem. While reading I wept, celebrated, and met my curiosities with surrender to Kai’s words—they are indeed holy. With so many beautiful moments to count—black snake, earthquake, fox, unicorn, hummingbird baptism, son flowers— it’s a jungle of blessings. Mother of Other Kingdoms is both a blade of steel and of soft grass, piercing and bending my heart to remember to love myself and others in any way that I can. Kai is an archetype of poetic genius, and this book is her opus, truly a masterpiece. Kai’s “heart is fertility itself,” and I am a daughter/sister/auntie to her verses. I am grateful for the reminder of how powerfully tender love can be. May we all mother and nurture the worlds around us. Asé.
CC Mercer Watson, author of A Love Story Waiting to Happen
Kai Coggin’s gleaming collection of poems, Mother of Other Kingdoms, is a testament to the power of language to sing our hearts open “despite the world breaking at every line.” Wide-ranging in its subject matter, this book explores urgent topical issues like race, ancestral trauma, and body image and also dives deeply into longing, nature, and love. More than anything, Coggin has written an ode to living this life, a life that is flawed the way a diamond is flawed, its inclusions unable to dim its bright beauty. In poem after poem, wild with love, she zooms in on our world and “consecrate[s] / the mundane / into / the sublime.”
Francesca Bell, author of What Small Sound
Kai Coggin’s Mother of Other Kingdoms is not only nurturing and healing, but reading this collection is akin to the practice of mindfulness needed in these troubled times. Her poems are handfuls of peace, moving rains over cracked earth—they hold us, sometimes on fragile branches, sometimes after an explosion, always with love. Coggin is one of our most treasured voices.
Edward Vidaurre, author of By Throat, By Miracle: New & Selected Poems