THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
POET NIKKI GIOVANNI has taken us to many beautiful places as she's ``ego-tripped'' over the past 25 years:
``I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is Nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman. . . .''
Necessary places. Ever since Giovanni, born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni in 1943, began her journey through poetry, she's taken readers on an intense ride through black life and consciousness, stirring up fierce pride and empowerment along the way.
Giovanni will discuss her life and work this week when she comes to Hampton Roads, visiting the Virginia Beach Campus of Tidewater Community College on Thursday as a Women's History Month speaker. Giovanni will also be at the Main Street Public Library in Newport News on Friday for a reading and signing of her latest book, ``The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni.''
``We're so excited about having her here,'' said Mary Pat Liggio, director of TCC's Regional Women's Center. ``She's such a voice, such a tremendous poet.''
Giovanni's work first emerged during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s, and Giovanni became one of the most celebrated and controversial voices of the era. She's now a professor of creative writing and the Harlem Renaissance at Virginia Tech, where she has taught for eight years.
``I became a speaker of the age inadvertently,'' Giovanni said in an interview with Virginia Tech Magazine. ``I have always thought my job is to call what I see, to describe my world. When you are a speaker from a people who don't have a voice, then you are a spokesperson.''
She has authored 12 books of poetry, including ``Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People,'' ``My House'' and ``Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day'' Her essay collections include ``Sacred Cows . . . and Other Edibles'' and ``Racism 101.''
Giovanni, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., in the early '60s. While there, she re-established the Fisk chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights group that had been banned several years before.
She graduated in 1966 and moved to Cincinnati, where she began to write poetry. Giovanni became managing editor of a local revolutionary publication, Conversation, and organized the city's first Black Arts Festival. In the fall of 1968, she enrolled in the School of Fine Arts of Columbia University in New York City but withdrew after being told she couldn't write.
By the end of 1968, Giovanni borrowed some money and published her first volume, ``Black Feeling, Black Talk.'' The following year, Giovanni began teaching in New York and self-promoting her book. Her first book party drew such a hefty crowd that it attracted the attention of a New York Times reporter, whose office was nearby. The newspaper wrote a front-page story on the unknown poet and national spotlight gave Giovanni a name.
She received a grant to publish her second volume of poetry, ``Black Judgment,'' and she hasn't stopped.
By 1973, she was named one of eight Women of the Year by Ladies' Home Journal and the American Library Association named her ``My House'' one of the best books of the year.
In 1987, Giovanni accepted a visiting professorship at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and took a permanent position in 1989. Last year, Giovanni had successful surgery for lung cancer which delayed her book tour until last month.
``Cancer is a condition you cannot beat but you can fight it,'' Giovanni said in a written statement. ``I had to make myself understand that this is what I have and now I am going to have to deal with it.''
When she's home in Blacksburg, Giovanni spends much of her time visiting and speaking at local schools and community groups.
``That's the responsibility of an English teacher and a writer,'' Giovanni said. ``After all, we are the dream makers.'' ILLUSTRATION: BARRON CLAIBORNE
Please write a simple caption here. Thank you.
[Nikki Giovanni]
by CNB