Poet Nikki Giovanni dies at age 81 : NPR

American poet Yolanda Cornelia ‘Nikki’ Giovanni leans on her desk next to a typewriter in front of a wall decorated with photos, 1973. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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The famous poet Nikki Giovanni has died. Giovanni died Monday, Dec. 9, after his third cancer diagnosis, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson. She was 81. “We will be forever grateful for the unconditional time she gave us, to all her literary children throughout the writing world,” poet Kwame Alexander said in the statement.

Giovanni published his first collection of poems, Black Feeling Black Talkin 1968. It established her as a new figure of the Black Arts Movement. In it, Giovanni writes about the intersections between love, politics, loneliness and race. Her language is sometimes sparse and wistful, other times dense and fair. The final lines of “Word Poem” read: “let’s build / what we become / when we dream.”

She was born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and its surrounding suburbs, she returned to Nashville to attend Fisk University for college. There she met other writers who had become leading black literary figures—Dudley Randall, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, and more. While at Fisk, she also re-established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

As her writing career took off, Giovanni became a regular guest at Soul!a black arts and culture talk show on WNET. Her conversation with the recognized author James Baldwin came on the heels of being named “Woman of the Year” by both Ebony magazine and Mademoiselle.

Giovanni eventually found his way to Virginia Tech and taught English for more than three decades. There she expressed concern about one of her students. He would go on to murder 32 people in the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Speaking of the shooting, Giovanni told NPR“Killing is a lack of creation. It is a lack of imagination. It is a lack of understanding of who you are and your place in the world. Life is an interesting and a good idea.”

She continued to work until her last days. After dozens of poetry collections under her belt, she was working on getting her last book of poems out when she died. It’s still set to come out next year, with the title THE LAST BOOK.