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