African American poet Nikki Giovanni passed away at the age of 81

Nikki Giovanni one of the world’s most celebrated African American poet passed away on Monday night at the age of 81.  

Reportedly, Giovanni lost her longstanding battle with lung cancer and died peacefully in her sleep by the side of her wife Virginia Fowler. 

Giovanni was still working as a professor of English at Virginia Tech University despite fighting with the illness. In her career spanning over 60 years, she continued working even at the elderly age.  

Prominent Figure in Black Arts 

Rising to fame during the late 1960s, she was a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement with her early work demonstrating a vibrant militant perspective which is a reminiscent of the Civil Rights & Black Power Movements. 

Later, she expanded her work to include children’s literature and works discussing social issues, relationships and even hip hop.  

Recently, she also won an Emmy for her Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for the HBO Original Doc, Going To Mars: The Nikki Govanni Project. 

Early life of Nikki Giovanni 

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni served as a University Distinguised Professor in the English Department at Virginia Tech.  

She was the daughter of Jones and Yolande Giovanni and was raised in Woodlawn, Ohio, north of Cincinnati. The poet was also the youngest of two daughters.  

In February 1967, she graduated magna cum laude with BA in history and before taking graduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, she organised the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati.  

Giovanni also studies social work at the University of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1968 before enrolling in an MFA program at Columbia in 1969.  

She was also an honorary member of Delta Signa Theta Soronty Inc and is a recipient of hundreds of awards and honours.  

Giovanni’s Carrer as a Writer and Poet 

During her early work, she expressed the militant themes of the Black Arts Movement, and these themes were particularly apparent in the first two volumes titled Black Feeling, Black Tall and Black Judgement in which the poem Nikki-Rosa first appeared.  

Her first poetry collection, “Black Feeling Black Talk,” released in 1968, established her as a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement. In this collection, she explores the intersections of love, politics, loneliness, and race. Her language ranges from spare and yearning to dense and powerful. 

She published her third volume Re:Creation a year later, including the classic poem Ego Tripping.  

Not only this, but in 1970 she privately published Night Comes Softly which was one of the earliest anthologies of Black women’s poetry.  

Notably, Giovannis is the author of 11 illustrated children's books which were released between 2005 and 2022. Her last book was A Library which was released in 2022.  

Giovanni won numerous awards, including the Rosa Parks Award, Langston Hughes Medal, seven NAACP Image Awards, held 27 Honorary degrees and was granted keys to over two dozen cities. 

She was a Grammy nominated poet who was also named to Oprah’s 25 Living Legends list in 2006. 

Following the news of her passing spread, tributes flooded in online as students and fans reflected on her monumental career and called her a legendary figure in the field of poetry.