Nikki Giovanni, the US poet laureate who emerged as one of the leading voices of the Black arts movement of the 1960s, has died at the age of 81.
John on Monday after his third cancer diagnosis, his friend, author Renée Watson, told NPR in a statement.
“We will always be grateful for the situation he gave us, to all his children and writers around the world,” said Alexander the poet Kwame.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, but called Nikki by her older sister, John studied at Fisk University in Nashville. There he met several Black literary figures including Amiri Baraka and Dudley Randal before studying poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts.
He published his first two collections of poetry in 1968 – Sentiments, Black Talk and Black Judgment – beginning a career that included more than 30 books, Who Rides the Night Wind and Bicycles: A Love Poem.
She became part of a black arts movement that included figures such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk and Audre Lorde. A civil rights activist and political writer, John also drew the attention of the FBI; The Pittsburgh Press said he invited surveillance officers to his home “for coffee because I knew he wanted to check the place.”
Writing accessible poetry about Black liberation, as well as poetry about love, gender, and the small pleasures of family life, John became a public figure. She appears in black arts and shows the Soul! in conversation with the likes of Baldwin and Muhammad Ali, he published many volumes of poetry and essays, championed hip-hop and wrote several children’s books including Rosa, the award-winning biography of Rosa Parks.
John taught English at Virginia Tech from 1987 until 2022. In 2007, one of his former poetry students killed 32 people in the Virginia Tech shooting. John later said she asked the university to remove him from its class in 2005, saying she felt he was a threat.
When asked about casting, John said: “Killing is a failure of creation. It is a lack of imagination. Lack of understanding is who you are and your place in the world. Life is interesting and … a good idea.”
When she died, she was working on a final collection of poetry, as well as a memoir titled A Street named after Mulvaney.
“I thought I was cooking” John told the Guardian in February. “You know, it’s getting to be old and I’m really cool. And then I realized, no, there’s still a lot of anger.”
John was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1990 and underwent several surgeries. He is survived by his son Thomas, his granddaughter, and his wife Virginia Fowler, an English professor who became a writer before John’s marriage.