By: Jasmine Taylor
Missouri Western welcomed world-renowned poet Nikki Giovanni to campus on April 6 as a guest judge and speaker for Western’s Mochila Review, a national literary publication.
For their annual writer’s contest, Mochila staff select a guest writer to judge the contest. When selecting this year’s guest, Dr. Marianne Kunkel, editor of the Mochila Review, said Giovanni was the first name to go on the board.
“Sam Lundy was one of our students who said, ‘I want Nikki Giovanni here’ and I think that was the first name that went on the board,” Kunkel said. “I laughed and said, ‘I do too, big deal’ like that’s not going to happen.”
After a quick email and crossed fingers, the staff waited. Giovanni responded the next day with a phone call and agreed to be the poet to judge the writing contest and guest speaker in the spring.
Both the students and Kunkel were in awe. After running down the hall and sharing the exciting news with a colleague, Kunkel shared the big news with the Mochila staff.
“I couldn’t believe it. When I told my students they just fell out of their chairs, that’s how it all started,” Kunkel said. “Then I worked with her agent to secure a date for the spring but this was all because of the students, and bless them for dreaming so big. I don’t know if I would have called her; I just didn’t think she was doing this kind of thing. She’s super famous, she has no reason to be touring universities other than them meeting her and seeing her read; that’s just in her heart. She wants to speak to people.”
The Potter Hall Theater was just shy of capacity for Giovanni’s reading that evening. Before the reading, a few journalism and English students had the opportunity to interview and dine with Giovanni.
Though many saw Giovanni as a legendary poet and full of wisdom, she didn’t see herself in the same prominent light.
“I don’t think I’m that prominent. I’m not Aretha Franklin, you know,” Giovanni said. “But I never look myself up, because then I might worry about what people think about me and not my poetry.”
Giovanni was always fond of storytelling and writing, which started at an early age. According to Giovanni, her sister was very pretty and her brother Gary being able to play the piano, and while she couldn’t do those things, she loved reading and learning things.
Giovanni watched the world around her; the country she lived in, the planet she lived in, and being a fan of the heavens and NASA, she watched the stars. As she watched, she wrote and told stories about it and found her niche with poetry.
“Oh, I could never write a novel. I look at novels by Toni Morrison and they’re so brilliant I’m glad I didn’t get involved in that,” Giovanni said. “I think that poetry and I got together simply because I put strange things together. I write about my experiences.”
Kunkel was pleased with the turnout and the positive responses from the event. She expressed the importance of Western letting students, especially students in the humanities, to see professional writers when they (the students) are struggling to see how valuable their major is.
“I think we do a good job here at the university of trying to expose our students to important people, and that night was so overwhelming at how profound, yet warm and friendly, she was,” Kunkel said. “She never changed who she was. I’ve never been in the presence of an author that was so warm and what surprises me about that is that she’s so famous and has been doing this for so long.”
With such great feedback received of the reading from the community, students and faculty, Kunkel said that a few names, such as J.K. Rowling, were being thrown around for next year, but nothing would be decided until sometime during the fall.
