The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni Read online

  1957–58 Giovanni enters the ninth grade at Lockland High School, an all-Black school. Her sister’s negative experiences in desegregating Wyoming High School make her and her parents uninterested in having her try to attend one of the white high schools. Gary leaves home to attend Central State University. Meanwhile, the tensions between her parents are difficult for Giovanni to handle. So in 1958 she asks her grandmother Watson if she can come to Knoxville for the summer. Once there, she tells her grandparents her real plan: to stay with them and attend school in Knoxville.

  1958–60 Giovanni enrolls in Austin High School, where her grandfather taught Latin for many years. Her grandmother, who is involved in numerous charitable and political endeavors, becomes an increasing influence on her, teaching her the importance of helping others and fighting injustice. When a demonstration is planned to protest segregated dining facilities at downtown Rich’s department store, her grandmother cheerfully volunteers Nikki. In high school Giovanni has two influential teachers: her French teacher, Mrs. Emma Stokes, and her English teacher, Miss Alfredda Delaney. They persuade her to apply for early admission to college. Meanwhile, Gary has a son, Christopher, in April 1959. That summer Giovanni returns to Cincinnati to take care of Christopher, who is living with her parents.

  1960–61 Giovanni goes to Nashville to enroll in Fisk University—her grandfather’s alma mater—as an early entrant. Academics present no problem to her, but she is unprepared for the conservatism of this small Black college. Almost from the outset she runs into trouble with the dean of women, Ann Cheatam, whose ideas about the behavior and attitudes appropriate to a Fisk woman are diametrically opposed to Giovanni’s ideas about the intellectual seriousness and political awareness appropriate to a college student. She goes back to Knoxville to spend Thanksgiving with her grandparents—without obtaining permission from Dean Cheatam. To compound the problem, when she visits Dean Cheatam the Monday after Thanksgiving, she articulates her contempt for the rules. Not surprisingly, she is expelled on February 1. She goes back to Cincinnati, where she lives with her parents. Her grandmother, far from uttering any reproach, travels to Nashville to meet with Dean Cheatam and later writes a letter protesting her decision.

  1961–63 Giovanni lives with her parents in Cincinnati, takes care of her nephew, and works at Walgreens. She also takes courses at the University of Cincinnati and does volunteer work with children and parents among her mother’s clients. Her parents move into a better house at 1168 Congress Avenue, just a few blocks from the house on Jackson. In March 1962, her grandfather Watson dies, and she drives her mother and nephew to Knoxville for the funeral.

  1964–66 Giovanni’s grandmother Louvenia is obliged to move from her home at 400 Mulvaney Street, which is sacrificed to “urban renewal.” Although her new house on Linden Avenue is nice, it lacks the accumulated memories of the old house, which Giovanni has come to regard as home. Giovanni travels to Fisk to explore the possibility of reenrolling. She discovers that Dean Cheatam is gone and that her replacement, Blanche McConnell Cowan (“Jackie”) is completely different. Dean Cowan purges the file Dean Cheatam collected on Giovanni and encourages her to come back, which she does in the fall of 1964. Giovanni does well academically and becomes a leader on campus. She majors in history but takes writers’ workshops with the writer in residence John Oliver Killens. In spring 1966, at the First Writers Conference at Fisk, she meets Dudley Randall, who will soon launch Broadside Press; Robert Hayden; Melvin Tolson; Margaret Walker; and LeRoi Jones, now Amiri Baraka. She edits a student literary journal (titled Élan) and reestablishes the campus chapter of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). She publishes an essay in Negro Digest on gender questions in the movement.

  1967 Having completed her undergraduate coursework in December, Giovanni moves back to Cincinnati and rents her own apartment. She receives her B.A. in history, with honors, on January 28. Her grandmother Louvenia Watson dies on March 8, just two days before she was to have come for a visit. Giovanni drives her mother, sister, and nephew to Knoxville for the funeral, marking the most significant loss of her life. She turns to writing as a refuge and produces most of the poems that will make up her first volume, Black Feeling Black Talk. She edits Conversation, a Cincinnati revolutionary art journal. She attends the Detroit Conference of Unity and Art, where she meets H. Rap Brown (1943–), now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, and other movement leaders. She organizes a Black Arts Festival, Cincinnati’s first, for which she adapts and directs Virginia Hamilton’s Zeely for the stage. Moves to Wilmington, Delaware and, with the help of a Ford Foundation fellowship, enrolls in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work. Works at a People’s Settlement House in Wilmington as a part of her graduate studies.

  1968 Giovanni borrows money to publish her first volume of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk. She drops out of the University of Pennsylvania but continues working at the settlement house. Continues writing poems at a prodigious rate. Goes to Atlanta for the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated on April 4. Receives a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Moves to New York City, where she begins almost immediately to attract attention. Enrolls in an M.F.A. program at Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts. At the end of the year, uses money from sales of Black Feeling Black Talk and a grant from the Harlem Arts Council to privately publish her second volume of poetry, Black Judgement; Broadside Press offers to distribute it.

  1969 Giovanni teaches at Queens College. She has a Sunday afternoon book party (to promote Black Judgement) at the old Birdland jazz club, which attracts hundreds of people and makes the next day’s metro section of The New York Times. Gains increasing attention from the media and begins receiving invitations to read and speak. In April The New York Times features her in an article entitled “Renaissance in Black Poetry Expresses Anger.” The Amsterdam News names her one of the ten “most admired Black women.” Regularly publishes book reviews in Negro Digest. Travels to Cincinnati for Labor Day weekend and gives birth to Thomas Watson Giovanni, her only child. Returns to New York and begins teaching at Livingston College of Rutgers University; frequently makes the commute with the struggling writer Toni Cade Bambara (1939–95).

  1970 Giovanni edits and privately publishes Night Comes Softly, one of the earliest anthologies of poetry by Black women; it includes poems by new and relatively unknown writers as well as by established poets such as Margaret Walker and Mari Evans. Establishes NikTom, Ltd. Meets Ellis Haizlip (1929–91) and begins making regular appearances on his television program, Soul!, an entertainment-variety-talk show that promoted Black art and culture and allowed political expression. (During the history of the show—1967–72—which aired on WNET, many important artists and leaders, including Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Gladys Knight, Miriam Makeba, and Stevie Wonder, made appearances. Giovanni was for several years a “regular.”) Giovanni publishes Black Feeling Black Talk/Black Judgement as one volume with William Morrow & Co. Publishes Re: Creation with Broadside Press. Writes and publishes the broadside “Poem of Angela Yvonne Davis.” Has become a recognized figure on the Black literary scene; in the anthology We Speak as Liberators, published this year, she is referred to as an “established name.” Ebony magazine names her Woman of the Year.

  1971 Giovanni publishes autobiography, Gemini, and poems for children, Spin A Soft Black Song. Black Feeling Black Talk/Black Judgement comes out in paperback. Records Truth Is On Its Way with the New York Community Choir. Performs with the choir in a concert to introduce the album at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem before a crowd of 1,500. Continues regular appearances on Soul!, including an appearance in January with Lena Horne. The Mugar Memorial Library of Boston University approaches her about housing her papers and she accepts; today the Mugar has all her papers and memorabilia. Contact magazine names her Best Poet in its annual awards. Mademoiselle magazine names her Woman of the Year. Travels to Africa. Truth sells more than 100,000 copies in its f
irst six months. Giovanni travels to London to tape special segments of Soul! with James Baldwin; these air on December 15 and 22. Falls ill from exhaustion after returning to the United States.

  1972 Giovanni publishes My House. Joins National Council of Negro Women. Receives an honorary doctorate from Wilberforce University, becoming the youngest person so honored by the nation’s oldest Black college. Truth Is On Its Way receives NATRA’s (National Association of Television and Radio Announcers) Award for Best Spoken Word Album. Receives widespread attention from print media, including publications such as Jet, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Ebony. Appears frequently on Soul! and is a guest on The Tonight Show. Plays an active role in a new publication undertaken by her friend Ida Lewis, Encore, later renamed Encore American & Worldwide News, a Black newsmagazine. Until 1980 Giovanni acts as consultant, contributes a regular column, and helps finance the magazine. Puts on a free Father’s Day concert with La Belle at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem. Performs at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center with the New York Community Choir and La Belle. Receives key to Lincoln Heights, Ohio. Reads at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Centennial in Dayton, Ohio, where she and Paula Giddings, then an editor at Howard University Press, conceive the idea of a book composed of a conversation between Giovanni and Margaret Walker (1915–98). Travels to Walker’s home in Jackson, Mississippi, in November to begin taping.

  1973 Giovanni publishes Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People and A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, an edited transcription of the videotaping she did with Baldwin for two episodes of Soul! Releases the album Like A Ripple On A Pond. The American Library Association names My House one of the best books of 1973. Gemini is nominated for a National Book Award. Meets Margaret Walker in Washington, D.C., to complete the tapings for their book. On May 14 receives a Woman of the Year Award from the Ladies’ Home Journal; the ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, airs nationwide, and Giovanni is criticized for accepting the award. Throws a thirtieth birthday party for herself on June 21 at New York’s Philharmonic Hall; the recital includes an introduction by Reverend Ike and guest appearances by Wilson Pickett and Melba Moore. Is initiated as an honorary member into Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., at its convention in Atlanta in August. Takes her sister to Paris to celebrate Gary’s graduation from Xavier University (Cincinnati). Receives Life Membership and Scroll from the National Council of Negro Women. Goes on an African lecture tour sponsored by USIA; brings her son and his nanny, Deborah Russell, a former student of hers at Rutgers. They visit Ghana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria.

  1974–77 Giovanni publishes A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker (1974) and The Women and the Men (1975). Releases the albums The Way I Feel (1975), Legacies (1976), and The Reason I Like Chocolate (1976). Receives honorary doctorates from Ripon University; the University of Maryland, Princess Anne Campus; and Smith College. Continues to write essays for Encore American & Worldwide News. Lectures extensively at colleges and universities across the country. Travels to Rome for the United Nations’ First World Food Conference (1974).

  1978–82 Giovanni publishes Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day and releases album with the same title (1978). Publishes Vacation Time in 1979. In 1978 her father has a stroke and is subsequently diagnosed with cancer. Giovanni moves with her son back to her parents’ home in Lincoln Heights. Primary responsibility for her parents and her son, including steep medical bills, increases her speaking schedule and she has less time to devote to writing. Named an honorary commissioner for the President’s Commission on the International Year of the Child. Father dies on June 8, 1982, one day after her thirty-ninth birthday.

  1983–87 Giovanni publishes Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983). Continues a heavy schedule of speaking engagements. Named Woman of the Year by the Cincinnati YWCA (1983). Teaches as a visiting professor at Ohio State University (1984–85) and as professor of creative writing at Mount Saint Joseph’s College (1985–87). Receives honorary doctorates from Mount Saint Joseph’s College (1985) and Mount Saint Mary College (1987). Makes a European lecture tour for USIA, visiting France, Germany, Poland, and Italy (1985). Is named to the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame (1985) and named Outstanding Woman of Tennessee (1985). Receives The Cincinnati Post’s Post-Corbett Award and serves as Duncanson artist in residence at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati (1986). Is the subject of a PBS documentary, Spirit to Spirit (1987). Thomas graduates from high school and enlists in the Army. Accepts position as Commonwealth Visiting Professor of English at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her mother moves to California to live with Gary. Serves on the Ohio Humanities Council. Judges the Robert F. Kennedy Book Awards.

  1988 Giovanni publishes Sacred Cows…and Other Edibles. Receives honorary doctorate from Fisk University. Cincinnati bi-centennial honoree. Spirit to Spirit receives the Silver Apple Award from the Oakland Museum Film Festival. Receives the Ohioana Library Award for Sacred Cows. McDonald’s institutes the Nikki Giovanni Poetry Award. USIA selects Spin a Soft Black Song for inclusion in its Exhibition to the Soviet Union. Vacation Time receives the Children’s Reading Roundtable of Chicago Award. National Festival of Black Storytelling initiates the Nikki Giovanni Award for Young African American Storytellers. Begins a writing group at Warm Hearth Village, a retirement home.

  1989–91 Giovanni accepts a permanent position as tenured full professor of English at Virginia Tech and relocates to Blacksburg, Virginia. Edits an anthology by her Warm Hearth writers group, Appalachian Elders: A Warm Hearth Sampler. Receives honorary doctorate from Indiana University. Attends Utrecht International Poetry Festival as the featured poet. “Two Friends” is incorporated as a permanent tile wall exhibit by the Oxnard Public Library in California. Thomas enrolls in Morehouse College. Continues to lecture on campuses across the country during the spring. Serves on the advisory board of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy (1990–96).

  1992–94 Giovanni publishes the twentieth-anniversary edition of Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young Readers (1993), which includes new poems. Publishes Racism 101 (essays) and Knoxville, Tennessee (illustrated children’s book). Edits and publishes Grand Mothers: A Multicultural Anthology of Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions. Receives honorary doctorates from Otterbein College (1992), Rockhurst College (1993), and Widener University (1993). Featured Poet at Portland (Oregon) Art Beat Festival. Receives Community Volunteer of the Year Award from Warm Hearth Village. Writes and presents a poem commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Mount Vernon Slave Memorial (“But Since You Finally Asked”). Conducts interview with the astronaut Mae Jemison for Essence magazine. Is Martin Luther King, Jr., Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon (1992). Is Hill Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota (1993). Continues to receive keys to the major cities in America; to date, these include Dallas, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Mobile, and a dozen or so more. Receives the Tennessee Writer’s Award from the Nashville Banner. Thomas graduates magna cum laude from Morehouse College (1994). Her mother and sister relocate to Virginia (1994).

  1995 In mid-January Giovanni is diagnosed with lung cancer. Travels to Cincinnati for a second opinion and has surgery at Jewish Hospital. Receives honorary doctorates from Albright College and Cabrini College. Is a week-long writer in residence for the National Book Foundation’s Family Literacy Program at the Family Academy in Harlem. In summer is visiting professor at Indiana University, Kokomo.

  1996–97 Giovanni publishes The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, The Genie in the Jar (illustrated children’s book), The Sun Is So Quiet (illustrated children’s book), Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems (all 1996), and Love Poems (1997). Releases Nikki in Philadelphia (1997). Receives honorary doctorate from Allegheny College (1997). Reads for “A Celebration of Lorraine Hansberry,” a benefit sponsored by the Schomburg Li
brary. Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni nominated for NAACP Image Award. Reads for Literacy Partners Benefit Reading at Lincoln Center. Receives the Langston Hughes Award. Is Artist in Residence for the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts. Travels on book tour. Continues to do a spring lecture tour. Named Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech (1997–99). Serves on the national advisory board of the National Underground Museum and Freedom Center (1997–).

  1998–99 Giovanni publishes Blues: For All the Changes (1999) and edits and publishes Grand Fathers: Reminiscences, Poems, Recipes, and Photos of the Keepers of Our Tradition (1999). Receives honorary doctorates from Delaware State University (1998), and Martin University and Wilmington University (1999). Named University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, the highest honor the university confers (1999). Wins NAACP Image Award for Love Poems (1998). Attends Millennium Evening at the White House. Inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. Receives Appalachian Medallion Award. Wins the 1998 Tennessee Governor’s Award in the Arts.

  2000–01 Giovanni receives NAACP Image Award for Blues: For All the Changes (2000). Wins the 2000 Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts. Receives honorary doctorates from Manhattanville College, State University of West Georgia (2000), and Central State University (2001). Named to the Gihon Foundation’s 2000 Council of Ideas. Serves as poetry judge for the National Book Awards (2000). Receives Certificate of Commendation from the U.S. Senate (2000). Serves on the board of trustees of Cabrini College (2001–03). Serves on the board of directors of Mill Mountain Theater (of Roanoke, Virginia) (2001–).