Leadership Through Poetry

via: http://www.yale.edu/bsc/keynote%20dinner.html

Hello My Gorgeous Viewers!

Next weekend, Yale will be holding its 19^th Annual Black Solidarity Conference and the keynote speaker will be Nikki Giovanni.  She is a poet who has become prominent due to her work as a civil rights activist.

She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1943.  Growing up, she was close to her grandmother who influenced her writing.  Giovanni developed an appreciation for her African-American heritage because of her grandmother.  Nikki Giovanni explains in an interview that “[she] came from a long line of storytellers.”  As a young girl, Giovanni moved with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where her teachers served as a support system.  She attended Fisk University where she served as the editor of the campus literary magazine, participated in the Fisk Writers Workshop and worked to reactivate the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chapter at Fisk. After graduating with a B.A. in history in 1968, Giovanni completed graduate studies at both UPenn and Columbia. Today, she is a professor at Rutgers University.

Not only has Nikki Giovanni produces literature like Gemini and Black Judgement for adults but also works like Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People and Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship.

Be inspired. Get Involved. MAKE a CHANGE!

Reference: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/nikki-giovanni