Coggin, Beard win Governor’s Arts Awards
Local poets Elmer Beard and Kai Coggin will be honored in the new year with Governor’s Arts Awards.
Coggin, a local educator, will receive the Arts in Education Award, while Beard, a former Hot Springs city alderman, will receive the Judges Recognition Award.
Coggin and Beard are just the latest Hot Springs area artists to be honored with Governor’s Arts Awards; in recent years, artists Richard Stephens and Anthony Tidwell also received the honor.
Beard, who started writing in the late 1950s, says he has written over 600 typed works. “To begin writing was to start something different from what most people were doing during my generation and in my culture at that time; it was a way to reflect my individualism and to share my gift, share my blessings.”
When he was in high school, Beard had to write a paper on what he was thankful for that Thanksgiving.
“Everybody was asked, grades
nine through 12, the exact same question — write me a paper about the things for which you are most thankful,” Beard said. “So I remember writing about having a match to start a fire,” he said, laughing.
“My father told about having to go to a brush pile, or pile of logs or a stump in the field by the woods, with a bucket, an ax and a hoe, and rake coals in the bucket, put it on your shoulder, bring it back to the house, and those coals would start the fire, if they let it out, because they have no match,” Beard said. “When I wrote one of those papers I said I was thankful for the match.”
Beard said his writing has evolved since he began, noting,
“It’s changed with the times, when I felt the need to say things that others would not say, that needed to be said. I have the support of better writers than I am.”
Beard said he enjoys writing, but also said he has to write. “I can’t help it. I can’t stop. My outlet is my sermon, it’s my prayer. This is what keeps me going,” he said. “I am uncomfortable if I don’t speak in public.”
Beard has also published two books, “The Challengers: Untold Stories of African Americans Who Changed the System in One Small Southern Municipality,” in 2016, and “Let Reason Roll: Race, Religion and Reflections,” in 2020.
This is the first time he was won an award for his poetry. “I’ve been recognized in my reading and distribution and the Black community in Little Rock during the month of February, but to have been granted an award for it, it’s the first time.”
He called the win a “compliment to the feel of art and poetry in the community” and said he hopes his win inspires younger writers. “That’s my hope, that this will be influential to others,” he said.
“I just find it interesting that in the African American community, we lack advancement according to my observations, because of our failure to write more than we rap,” Beard said.
Beard used to wear a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Write it” while he was teaching. Beard, the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Branch No. 6013 in Hot Springs, said when people come to the NAACP with a complaint, “they can last for three to five minutes, to 10, to 30 minutes or maybe an hour if we allow it. Instead, we say ‘ write it.’ Sometimes that ends it. That’s a weakness. If you have a problem, you can’t put it in writing, can’t get it in writing … the system respects writing. The system recognizes the ink. If we (the African American community) advance in writing, we can measure our progress because in our writing we can become a threat or a motivation to the system of that which we deserve and have been denied.”
Coggin said she was “very thankful and humbled, and to be nominated by Mary Zunick and Stacy Pendergrast,” noting that “teaching is one of the most important things in my life.”
Coggin teaches poetry to students all over the state. “I get to bring poetry to over 3,000 kids every year,” she said.
In working with the Arkansas Arts Council, she said she gets to go into classrooms for two weeks to teach a course on poetry.
“Like a bolt of lightning,” Coggin said she shows children around the state “there’s a published writer making a career in Arkansas.” By introducing herself to her students, Coggin is showing them “you can be a poet and make a life of it.”
In her two- week sessions with classrooms, she said she tries to make the students open up to the idea of poetry and introduces them to poets and poems that would appeal to them. “I make kids laugh, have fun. I don’t bring in poets that are old dead white guys. I bring in poems about things they care about,” Coggin said, noting most “don’t really care about Walt Whitman.”
Mental health, Coggin said, is a big part of poetry. In a year like 2020, poetry is especially needed. “I had some rough experiences growing up,” she said, and during these hard times, she would write about her experiences, “so I didn’t have to carry it around on my shoulders.”
Her classroom, Coggin said, “is a safe place for ( the student’s) feelings.” Via poetry, her students can address “poverty, drugs, abuse, systemic racism,” she said. “It’s amazing, in just a couple days, these kids will open up a whole world to me.”
With changes in routine life from COVID-19, Coggin said it is good to get the tool of poetry in students’ hands so they can deal with not being able to see their friends or grandparents.
Prior to moving to Arkansas, Coggin taught ninth and 10th grade English in Houston, Texas, where she won District
Secondary Teacher of the Year and was a top five finalist for Regional Teacher of the Year. She said she decided to pursue a career in poetry.
While teaching in Houston, Coggin taught her students about poetry and brought in Sandra Cisneros, a famous poet, to meet her students. She said this “project I did with them was so powerful and culminated with this famous poet coming to my classroom.”
Coggin has released multiple books, including “PERISCOPE HEART” in 2014, “Wingspan” in 2016, and “INCANDESCENT” in 2019.
Beard and Coggin were complimentary of each other’s award.
“There’s a great need for both of us,” Beard said. “Kai and I, we should be accepted, and we are, which reflects the progress and road we’ve made through our community. I think the things we say and do may not be said and done if we didn’t do them.”
“Mr. Beard is like my grandfather. We’ve kind of adopted each other,” Coggin said. “We’re both activist poets.”
Both are also involved in Wednesday Night Poetry. Coggin is the host of the weekly event and Beard said he has participated since the 1990s.
Zunick nominated both Coggin and Beard for their awards. “I think she’s courageous, needed in our community. That is a second-mile worker,” Beard said about Zunick.
“Zunick is such a leader in Hot Springs,” Coggin said.
“I was so excited,” Zunick said about learning that Beard was selected, noting she was the one who told him he won.
“I think he was a little stunned,” she said. Asked why she nominated Beard, Zunick said. “He just seemed like someone from our community who should be celebrated.”
Zunick said Coggin was “another person who within our Hot Springs community who has done so much in Hot Springs.”
“Kai is such a treasure to Hot Springs,” Zunick said.
“I think it’s a statement to how thriving our arts community is, not just visual arts,” Zunick said about the two poets winning.