Nikki Giovanni, the world-renowned American poet and a leading voice of the 1960s Black Arts movement, died on 9 December at the age of 81 after her third cancer diagnosis. A beloved poet and public intellectual for over 50 years, Giovanni wrote at the intersection of love, loneliness, gender, race, creativity and more.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Giovanni was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and went on to attend Fisk University in Nashville, as well as studying poetry at New York’s Columbia. She published her first two books of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, in 1968 and rose to prominence as a politically engaged, emotionally attuned leader of the Black Arts movement along with such figures as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk and Audre Lorde.
