By Nella Rohan, ArtWell Staff Writer

On December 9th, 2024, we lost a national treasure: the iconic poet, Nikki Giovanni. A towering literary figure of the Black Arts Movement, Nikki Giovanni’s work found me at a difficult transition in my adolescence like divine intervention. While I left most vestiges of my adolescence in the past, Nikki Giovanni remains my #1 poet to this day and continues to inspire me through her lyricism and how brazenly she lived her life. I was particularly struck by her penchant for infusing humor into heavy topics.

Reflecting on her legacy, revisiting her poetry, and watching Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project documentary, I felt an idea ignite. What if we celebrated the creativity and imagination of prominent artists and poets through a new blog series?

To honor her life, contributions, and what she represents to me as a literary and cultural figure, it feels only fitting to begin with the one who inspired it all.

In the Imagination of: Nikki Giovanni

With a personality as bold as her words and an unyielding devotion centering on race, gender, and Black liberation, Giovanni transformed life and words into art. Her poetry explored topical subjects and evergreen themes of social justice, familial relationships, and identity. She had a way of making complex ideals and harrowing problems approachable. Juxtaposition characterizes her work, which is deceptively simple yet evocative,accessible yet profound, tender yet unflinching, and at times shocking and shameless. For me, she was more than a poet. During my adolescence, Giovanni’s words felt like a trusted friend, daring me to think critically, stand in my truth, and approach life with courage and authenticity.

The written word has always been my refuge in confusing or uncertain times. As an adolescent, it helped me to make sense of my life and “create myself.” During my sophomore year of high school, my parents uprooted our lives, moving our family from the Connecticut town I had come to call home, to New Jersey. Plunged into an affluent and homogenous new school, I felt alien—disconnected from any sense of belonging. And the stark cultural contrast of this new environment didn’t help: a predominantly white student body replaced the rich diversity of my previous school, once ranked as Connecticut’s most diverse. Bereft of my closest friendships, I rushed home every day to check the mailbox, hoping for letters from friends. I would cradle the envelopes, studying the handwriting, imagining the words within, savoring the moment, the proof that someone cared enough to write, stamp, and send a piece of themselves to me. In turn, I poured my afternoons into writing back, desperately trying to stay connected to the life I’d left behind.

Despite the loneliness, I performed politeness, masking the ache of estrangement. I joined the basketball team, only to find it a poor substitute for the camaraderie I had known. The team was all white, and to my consternation, the team’s star player–a tall modelesque girl—had my name. I quit. I joined clubs, played my clarinet in the marching band, and made new acquaintances, but the sense of home I yearned for eluded me. Most days, I skipped the cafeteria’s clamor of social politics, childish antics, and uninspired food. Instead, I sought asylum in the library and it, indeed, became my sanctuary. There, among the shelves, I soaked my sponged brain in a tsunami of words and ideas, finding temporary reprieve in the literary worlds that welcomed me unconditionally. Finding me…

Imagination is contagious. Once we glimpse its pliability, we yearn to mold it and explore its possibilities ourselves. Imagination is the precursor to actions that spark movements. Giovanni, often referred to as “The People’s Poet,” understood this well. She took a grassroots approach to her writing career and worked tirelessly in her community and in academia (she was even hospitalized for exhaustion after filming her famous “Dialogue with James Baldwin”) as an activist on behalf of those she championed. One can be ubiquitous without being accessible (think…early to mid-2000s Beyonce), but Giovanni was both. She was a visionary and a giant walking alongside us, talking to us and holding our hands, which is the essence of why she is cemented in the culture as an icon.

To finish telling my story, I have to confess something I’m not proud of. During my phase of the media center in lieu of lunch, I fell in love with a hardbound collection of Giovanni’s poems. She was unabashed in her imperfections, almost proud of them, which is an essential quality for relatable writing. I was hooked. Giovanni wielded her imagination and creativity in a way that shaped me as a poet, a writer, and a Black woman. Confidence yet vulnerability, sensuality yet shocking moments of crassness commingled to form a singular, legendary voice. I couldn’t part with the book, and I couldn’t afford it, so I snuck it out of the library and…well… I still have it to this day. I know, I know, but no worries; taking things that don’t belong to me remains in the annals of my childhood. To even out any bit of pesky karma that may be mucking up my energy field, I decided to send a copy of the book to my alma mater. Who knows, perhaps there is a lonely, bookish Black teenager who needs her poems as much as I once did.