Workshop
Opening to Wonder: Attention & Inspiration in NATURE **Please note all times are listed in EST**
Step outside of yourself and walk in the soft grasses and open wildflowers of the natural world with award-winning poet and master naturalist Kai Coggin. Join Kai as she guides you into a pulsing inner world that lives all around us-- the world of birds, bees, butterflies, trees, and furry wild ones that brush up against our humanness. You will explore poems by Mary Oliver and W.S. Merwin, as well as many living poets who open worlds of wonder through the lens of their nature-inspired work. Through reading, discussing, and a series of prompts, this generative workshop will culminate in you having a first draft of nature or eco-poetry that harnesses the wonder and attention of the natural world around us in order to infuse meaning into our human existence. Participants will be welcome to share their drafts and be heard. Kai holds a safe and warm space.
Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). 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 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, 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, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Writing Guild. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas