NOTED POET NIKKI GIOVANNI TO DELIVER BLACK HISTORY MONTH LECTURE TODAY
Noted poet Nikki Giovanni will deliver Old Dominion University's annual Black History Month Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, in the North Cafeteria of Webb University Center.
A professor of English at Virginia Tech, the 56-year-old Giovanni is the author of 13 books of poetry including "Love Poems," for which she received a NAACP Image Award, and "The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni."
Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tenn., but raised in Cincinnati and is a graduate of Fisk University in Memphis. She holds honorary degrees from Indiana University-Gary and Otterbein College.
Her political involvement at Fisk would continue to absorb her attention for decades to come. In 1967, she became actively involved in the Black Arts Movement, a loose coalition of African-American intellectuals who wrote politically and artistically radical poems aimed at raising awareness of black rights.
Radicalized by the assassination of Malcolm X and the rise of the militant Black Panthers, her poetry in the 1960s and 1970s was colorful and combative.
Giovanni received the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and has been named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal and Essence.
The event is sponsored by the Hugo A. Owens African-American Cultural Center and Multicultural Student Services.
For more information, call Multicultural Student Services at 683-5490.