Nikki Giovanni: Poems 1968–2020

A major new career-spanning selection from one of the world’s foremost poets, an international treasure, from 1968 to the present day

Nikki Giovanni's poetry has dazzled and inspired readers for more than sixty years. When she first emerged from the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became one of the most celebrated and controversial poets of the era. Now considered a living legend, this is the first new selection since the late 1990s and offers readers a chance to be introduced to and to celebrate her incredible lifetime's work.

Giovanni’s poetry has always been a powerful expression of her ideas about love, race, politics and gender, but part of that power has also been the sensitive and intimate way Giovanni is able to bring to light the heart and soul of herself and her readers. Giovanni's poetry speaks from and to the Black experience, with Black love, Black struggle and Black joy at the centre. Arranged chronologically and spanning the entirety of her career, this selection charts not only the development of a great poet but also of sixty years of American life, bringing together motherhood and revolution, political dreams and great loves, men, women, children and community, and shows Giovanni at her essential, profound best.

Review

A generous and comprehensive selection from one of the foremost poets of the Black Arts Movement ... fiery, defiant and polemic ... Reading Nikki Giovanni's work is akin to having an intimate conversation with a trusted friend. These are warm, accessible poems that celebrate, move and inspire, as well as calling out racial injustices ― Guardian

One of the greatest poets of any generation ― Chicago Review of Books

Hail, Lionheart Nikki, to whom all poets who come after owe a massive debt for the brilliant and fearless ways in which your early poems urge us to claim our rightful space and to render the old and familiar, vital and strange again. The poems in this new selected contain everything from get-up-stand-up anthems and musings informed by the wisdom of the ages, to crystalline plainchants and lullabyes. A wonderful and necessary collection -- Lorna Goodinson

The work of Nikki Giovanni has been as evolutionary as it has been revolutionary. One of the finest poets of our time ― Ebony

About the Author

Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist, mother and professor, is a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, among many other honours. She is the author of thirty books and has received thirty-one honorary doctorates. Until 2022 she was the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.