The trailblazing poet, artist, educator, and lifelong activist Nikki Giovanni, referred to as the “Princess of Black Poetry,” died on Monday, December 9 at a hospital in Blacksburg, Virginia. She was 81. Giovanni’s publicist advised native reporters that she handed away after issues associated to lung most cancers along with her spouse, Virginia “Ginny” Fowler, by her facet.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee, she grew up between her birthplace and Ohio and attended Fisk College, graduating in 1967. Within the wake of the dying of her grandmother and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the next 12 months, she started writing poetry to course of her grief. Giovanni went on to publish over 20 poetry collections and greater than a dozen illustrated youngsters’s books, profitable quite a few prizes together with the inaugural Rosa Parks Lady of Braveness Award in 2002. Her best-known works embody her first three poetry collections, Black Feeling, Black Speak (1968), Black Judgment (1968) and Re: Creation (1970), which drew inspiration from her key function within the Black Arts Motion of the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, when Black American intellectuals and artists of assorted disciplines used their work to rejoice African-American tradition and create new group areas targeted on self-determination.
It was additionally throughout this era that Giovanni had a historic multi-topic dialog with author James Baldwin for the general public tv program Soul! Initially filmed in London in 1971, the episode was later transcribed and tailored into the collaborative guide A Dialogue (1973) and continues to resonate many years later for its illuminating questions and candid commentary on topics spanning race, gender, and politics.
“An educator, activist, and iconic poet, Nikki Giovanni challenged us to examine love, revolution, and what it means to be human — all while being a beacon of light to anyone who met her, including me,” Pleasure Bivins, director of the Schomburg Heart for Analysis in Black Tradition in New York Metropolis, advised Hyperallergic.
“Each of us had our own treasured Nikki Giovanni work that not only lifted our spirits but reminded us to use our own voices to make change,” Bivins mentioned.
Nikki Giovanni, circa 1968 (picture by Pictorial Parade/Getty Pictures)
In 2023, Giovanni was the topic of Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster’s biographical documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Challenge. The poet made headlines earlier this 12 months when she joined the filmmakers and author Doreen St. Félix in boycotting a scheduled screening and dialogue across the movie on the Brooklyn Museum to protest the establishment and its program associate, PEN America, for his or her alleged silence on Israel’s ongoing assaults on Palestine.
“I stand with my producers and understand pain. I hope peace and the prayers for peace will be answered,” Giovanni advised Hyperallergic in March.
Along with her poetry and activism, Giovanni is widely known for her youngsters’s works, together with the illustrated biography Rosa (2005) about Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks, whom Giovanni knew personally. She additionally produced a number of nonfiction works and essays, edited anthologies, and created a number of audio recordings merging spoken-word poetry with music, reminiscent of Fact Is On Its Means (1971), Like a Ripple on a Pond (1973), and The Means I Really feel (1975). Extra just lately, Giovanni revealed Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose (2020), which celebrates her Black heritage whereas additionally delving into the enduring results of racism and white nationalism. Her closing assortment of poetry, The Final Guide, is slated to be launched subsequent 12 months.
“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: My dream was to discover something no one else had thought of. I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does,” Giovanni wrote on her web site.
Along with her literary contributions, Giovanni held instructing positions at Rutgers College and Queens School earlier than taking a job at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College, the place she met Fowler, who grew to become her life associate. The couple later married in 2016.
Her dedication to advocacy is what impressed artist Robert Shetterly to color her portrait for his Individuals Who Inform the Fact sequence (2002–ongoing), which pays tribute to previous and current American truthtellers. Shetterly advised Hyperallergic that he included her in his undertaking “because of her fearless insistence of telling the truth about racism and misogyny in this country.”
“The power and precision of her words were like an arrow into our stubborn, unwoke hearts,” Shetterly mentioned.
Along with Fowler, Giovanni is survived by her solely little one, Thomas Watson Giovanni, and a granddaughter, in keeping with the New York Instances.
“We mourn this profound loss and find comfort in the fact that Nikki Giovanni’s incredible words are a legacy that will continue to heal, delight, and inspire generations to come,” Bivins mentioned.