[Unedited] Nicki Giovanni with Krista Tippett

<p>It feels good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer Nikki Giovanni’s signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure. In the 1960s, she was a poet of the Black Arts Movement that nourished civil rights. She’s also a professor at Virginia Tech, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she’s an adored voice to a new generation — an enthusiastic elder to us all — at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime even while she sees and delights in the beyond of it.</p><p>Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor in the English department at Virginia Tech. She has written and edited numerous books of poetry and works for children, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/quilting-the-black-eyed-pea-poems-and-not-quite-poems/9780060099534"><i>Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea</i></a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Feeling-Talk-Nikki-Giovanni/dp/068825294X"><i>Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment</i></a>, and <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-collected-poetry-of-nikki-giovanni-1968-1998/9780060724290"><i>The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni</i></a>. Her latest work is <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/make-me-rain-poems-prose/9780062995285"><i>Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose</i></a><i>.</i></p><p>This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode Nikki Giovanni — ‘We go forward with a sanity and a love’ Find more at <a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/nikki-giovanni-we-go-forward-with-a-sanity-and-a-love">onbeing.org</a>.</p><p>This show originally aired on March 17, 2016.</p>