Nikki Giovanni: Poet. Beacon. Legacy.

The Furious Flower family mourns the loss of our beloved friend, the incomparable poet Nikki Giovanni.

The tributes abound, and everyone is familiar with Nikki Giovanni’s life as a relentless advocate for Black lives, a poet, a public intellectual, a teacher, a mentor and friend. She was a fierce force for justice, for love and for community, and her legacy is both large and indomitable.

Her impact on Furious Flower is a small, yet mighty part of that legacy. In 1987, Furious Flower founder, Dr. Gabbin, gathered a group of Black women writers to a weekend retreat to welcome Nikki Giovanni to Virginia. That group became The Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective — a space of sisterhood, shared struggle and deep, abiding friendship — and has met annually since that first gathering. Nikki and Wintergreen were instrumental thought partners with Dr. Gabbin, as the idea of Furious Flower took shape and were midwives in the birthing of that first, historic conference, which is to say that Nikki is part of the DNA of Furious Flower. She was a collaborator with Dr. Gabbin from that first conference, where she was among the first to say she wanted to be a part of celebrating Gwendolyn Brooks, to their partnership in 2012 to celebrate Toni Morrison in the program Sheer Good Fortune. A bench, sponsored by Nikki and dedicated to Toni Morrison, sits outside Cardinal House. And in turn Furious Flower celebrated her, honoring her with the week-long Legacy Seminar, The Living Truth: The Life and Legacy of Nikki Giovanni in 2019.

Giovanni visited JMU many times, and impacted students, faculty and staff alike. Most recently, in December 2023, she joined several founding members of the Wintergreen Women to meet the students enrolled in a course co-taught by Caitlin Birch of JMU Libraries and Mollie Godfrey in English that conducted oral histories of the group. She spoke to the group of students congratulating them on their work, and encouraging them to keep using their voices.

Above all, Nikki was a friend, sister, and support to Dr. Gabbin, and “Poem for Joanne,” a poem dedicated to their friendship is included in her collection of poems, A Good Cry. “Friendship doesn’t have a season,” she writes, and indeed, she will be a friend of Furious Flower forever.