First Friday June with Kai Coggin
By Margaret A. Keough
KAI COGGIN: FIVE POEMS
June 3 through July 15th, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. each day
A video and sound projection, accessible from the sidewalk in front of M-AAA headquarters
The five poems are: Izibongo for Black Women (a praise poem after JP Howard, for my Sisters); Fertile; Tendrils; Filling Spice Jars As Your Wife; and Quantify (upon the milestone of 1,000,000 American COVID deaths, May 2022)
More about this exhibition can be found on the artist’s site.
About the Artist
Kai Coggin is the author of MINING FOR STARDUST (FlowerSong Press 2021), INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications 2014), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
