Welcome to the September 2016 edition of Blue Heron Speaks!  After our summer hiatus, it is a great pleasure for me to share with you our featured author this month – the very talented, open-hearted poet, Kai Coggin.  With lush imagery, sleek, musical phrasing, and inventive language, Coggin skillfully awakens a sleeping world for us.  We see Coggin unfold her own wings with an elegant display of tender vulnerability and passionate poetics.

Please visit the Blue Heron Speak page of the BHR site to read 3 sample poems from her latest book, Wingspan (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016).

Kai Coggin is a former Teacher of the Year, turned poet and author, living on the side of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, AR.  She holds a BA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A & M University, and writes poems on love, spiritual striving, body image, injustice, metaphysics, and beauty.  Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, The Tattooed Buddha, Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, SunStruck Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Snapdragon, Women’s Spiritual Poetry, Elephant Journal, and many other literary journals and anthologies.  Kai is the author of two full-length collections, Periscope Heart (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014) and Wingspan (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016).  Her poetry has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry 2015.  She teaches an adult creative writing class called Words & Wine, and is also a Teaching Artist with the Arkansas Arts Council, specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth.  www.kaicoggin.com

Wingspan (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016)