In Memoriam: Nikki Giovanni, acclaimed poet of the Black Arts Movement

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Nikki Giovanni, an award-winning poet who was one of the leading voices of the 1960s Black Arts movement, has died.

She was 81.

Statement on Nikki Giovanni’s death

Giovanni died on Monday, Dec. 9, following her third cancer diagnosis, her friend, the author Renée Watson, told NPR in a statement.

“We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world,” said the poet Kwame Alexander.

Distinguished poet

Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr was born in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Affectionately named Nikki by her older sister, Giovanni studied at Fisk University in Nashville. There, she met several Black literary figures including Amiri Baraka and Dudley Randal before studying poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts.

With a career that has spanned over four decades, she published her first two poetry collections in 1968, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement and Those Who Ride the Night Winds and Bicycles: Love Poems.

Black Arts Movement

Soon after, she would join the Black Arts Movement, which included figures such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk and Amiri Baraka.

As a civil rights activist and politically engaged writer, Giovanni also attracted the attention of the FBI. She once told the Pittsburgh Press during an interview that she used to invite the agents monitoring her into her home “for coffee because I knew they wanted to check out the place”.

Giovanni was a revered public figure who enamored audiences with her writings about Black liberation, as well as poetry on love, gender and the small pleasures of family life.

She appeared on the Black arts show Soul! in conversation with the likes of Baldwin and Muhammad Ali, edited many volumes of poetry and essays, championed hip-hop and wrote several children’s books including Rosa, an award-winning biography of Rosa Parks.

Nikki Giovanni’s memory

Giovanni was an English professor at Virginia Tech from 1987 until 2022.

She is survived by her son Thomas, her granddaughter, and her spouse, Virginia Fowler.