In Coggin's debut collection of poetry, the Heart is the lens through which she leads us in words. Every line is infused with beauty and light and a yearning that is inescapable, palpable. Her voice is precise and piercing, like a song you hum without knowing, because it is already inside you. Her poems carry the fluttering soul, with vivid imagery that is tangible and evocative. PERISCOPE HEART is the sound of wings opening.
"I first met Kai Coggin as a blazing fire of energy, a supernova educator in the Houston high schools. Now she is on her light path teaching through her own poetry. Her words are spells, chants, prayers, invocations. Thank you, Kai, for work of the spirit, for illuminations like desert thunder and a night sky of benedictions."
- Sandra Cisneros author of House on Mango Street
"Kai Coggin's first full-length collection, Periscope Heart - as the title may suggest - overflows with intimate reflections on life and love that offer the reader heartfelt observations into places ordinarily beyond our range of vision. Through sensual chronicles that beautifully illuminate taboo subjects, Coggin's poetry draws from nature and personal narratives to intimate us with her passion for justice, social change and spirituality, in dynamic, seductive strokes."
- Catherine Ghosh Editor of Journey of the Heart: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry by Women
"Kai Coggin's Periscope Heart is beauty mapping the dark, a canyon of becoming and letting go. It is a compass to a place where desire is no different than already-full. It beckons and peels open what is fierce in our softness. This book unleashes possibility, celebrates the wild and untethered, while slowing everything down to the heart's pace."
- Andrea Gibson Spoken Word Artist and Author of The Madness Vase, Winner of 2008 Women of the World Poetry Slam
Periscope Heart is the first full length collection of poetry from Kai Coggin published by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC.
About the Author: Kai Coggin is a full-time poet and freelance writer born in Bangkok, Thailand, raised in Southwest Houston, and currently a blip in the 3-million acre Ouachita National Forest in Hot Springs, AR. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A&M University. She writes poems of feminism, love, spirituality, injustice, metaphysics, and beauty. Kai has been published in Elephant Journal, Cliterature, The Manila Envelope, Synonyms for Empath, Catching Calliope and an anthology to be released summer 2014 called Journey of the Heart. She released her first chapbook, In Other Words, in August 2013. PERISCOPE HEART is her first full-length collection of poetry. Kai knows that words hold the potential to create monumental and global change, and she uses her words like a sword of Beauty. She can be found most Wednesdays at a local venue, reading her poems into an open mic, hoping the wind carries her words out to the world.
