Description
A major new career-spanning selection from one of the world’s foremost poets, an international treasure, from 1968 to the present day
Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has dazzled and inspired readers for more than sixty years. When she first emerged from the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became one of the most celebrated and controversial poets of the era. Now considered a living legend, this is the first new selection since the late 1990s and offers readers a chance to be introduced to and to celebrate her incredible lifetime’s work.
Giovanni’s poetry has always been a powerful expression of her ideas about love, race, politics and gender, but part of that power has also been the sensitive and intimate way Giovanni is able to bring to light the heart and soul of herself and her readers. Giovanni’s poetry speaks from and to the Black experience, with Black love, Black struggle and Black joy at the centre. Arranged chronologically and spanning the entirety of her career, this selection charts not only the development of a great poet but also of sixty years of American life, bringing together motherhood and revolution, political dreams and great loves, men, women, children and community, and shows Giovanni at her essential, profound best.







You Can't Take an Elephant on the Bus
Reference Points
The Shaking City
The Last Poems of Jules Laforgue
Skimbleshanks
The Tamarit Poems
Poems Written Abroad
No Far Shore
Somewhere Else Entirely
Pretend You Don't Know Me
The Bees
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Peace Poems and meditations on peace
Who Is Mary Sue?
Jinx
Negative Space
Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods
101 Poems About Childhood
The Sun of Hereafter
Will Burns
Swansea Automatic
The Handle of the Door