Nikki Giovanni has been writing for four decades now, and first made her name in the 1960s as a female literary innovator as part of the Black Arts Movement. This movement also included the sharp novelist and essayist Ismael Reed, author of Writin' Is Fightin' and numerous other books, and poet Amiri Baraka.

Giovanni's poetry made a splash with its bare, intense, political, and descriptive style in the 1960s. Her earliest books like "Black Feeling Black Talk" (1968) offer a concise, short-lined poetry in the stylistic vein of William Carlos Williams, with her own original content and viewpoint. Since then, her styles and subjects have ranged and explored.

She is a passionate and engaging reader, and says it as she sees it. Her Friday, March 2 evening reading at the Baltimore Central Library should be a thrill.

Giovanni is promoting her twelth book of poems, "Acolytes," and the reading will be presented by both Enoch Pratt and Karibu Books. She currently is a professor of English at Virginia Tech University.

Nikki Giovanni--Reading
6:30 PM, March 2
Wheeler Auditorium
Central Library
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
410-396-5430

Samples of her work:

"Possum Crossing" (A Poem)
poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16548

"Quilts" (A Poem)
poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16891