Reimagine Virtual Candlelight Vigil with James Crews and Kai Coggin
Reimagine has been hosting candlelight vigils since March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to break down taboos and hold space for all that we've lost. This gathering features James Crews and Kai Coggin, award-winning poets and educators. Vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles and pianist Jarrett Cherner will lead the honor ceremony.
James Crews is the author of six prize-winning collections of poetry, including Unlocking the Heart, and the nonfiction book Kindness Will Save the World. His newest publication is Turning Toward Grief: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Appreciation (Broadleaf Books, 2025). He is also the editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including How to Love the World, which has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition and in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and The Christian Century. Crews is the winner of the New England Book Award for Poetry and curates a free poetry newsletter called The Weekly Pause. He lives with his husband in Vermont. www.jamescrews.net
Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her project Sharing Tree Space. She is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, an CATALYZE and INTERCHANGE 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.
Coggin was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. She was twice 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 tender poetry has been nominated nine times for The Pushcart Prize, and awarded Best of the Net 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, Poets(.)org, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley, where they tend to wild ones and each other. www.kaicoggin.com
Sarah Elizabeth Charles is a vocalist/composer based in New York City. She has worked with numerous artists, has led her band, SCOPE, for thirteen years and has recorded four critically acclaimed studio albums under her own name. Charles' musical output has been described as a “genre of one” by DownBeat Magazine, “soulfully articulate” by the NY Times and “an unmatched sound” by Jay Z’s Life+Times. In addition to her performances, Charles is also an active educator. She currently works as a lead teaching artist with Carnegie Hall at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and co-teaches two self-designed courses (with Caroline Davis) called Jazz and Gender and New Narratives: Creating Space for Equity in Music at The New School. In 2019, she was one of five recipients of the Yale School of Music's Distinguished Teaching Artist Award. In 2020, she became a selected member of the Joe’s Pub Working Group, a recipient of the NYC Women’s Fund grant for her band’s fourth album, Blank Canvas, and a recipient of Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant. In 2023, she was selected by Joe’s Pub to receive the New York Voices Commission for her song cycle set to Maya Angelou’s poetry and debuted her fifth album project Dawn (to be released in October 2025 and inspired by her journey through miscarriage/birth/motherhood) in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Room. One can only look to the future for more boundary pushing music and initiatives from this unique artist. www.sarahelizabethcharles.com
Hailed as “an impressive soloist and an immaculate accompanist” who is "particularly inventive”, Brooklyn-based pianist, composer and bandleader Jarrett Cherner has captivated listeners with his lyricism, technical facility and consistently evolving musical vision. He debuted on his own BaldHill Music label with the compelling trio release Burgeoning, which earned recognition from the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards. As a driving force behind the collective jazz quintet Sketches (sketchesmusic.com), Cherner released two albums, both critically acclaimed: Sketches Volume One and Volume Two. Cherner’s 2016 trio release Expanding Heart features bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Jason Burger in a set that reflects personal growth, combining original material with covers of wildly disparate songs by Vincent Rose, Otis Redding, and Ornette Coleman. Cherner united with vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles for their 2020 release Tone, an album that features eight original songs — finely wrought, emotive, and richly melodic. He has toured throughout the U.S., as well as in South America, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. A passionate educator as well, he has worked as a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall, taught for years at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and maintains a private studio in Brooklyn, NY. www.jarrettcherner.com
About Reimagine
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together in the hopes of healing ourselves and the world. We specifically support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and – at our own pace – actively channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth.
