BLACKSBURG, Va. – During one of Virginia Tech’s darkest hours, one of its brightest lights illuminated the way forward.
Nikki Giovanni’s stirring “We Are Virginia Tech” poem received a standing ovation during a convocation following the 2007 shootings.
“We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid,” Giovanni declared. “We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be.”
English department chair Kelly Pender was in her first year as a professor that spring. She later taught the poem to her students.
“Every time I come back to it, I’m amazed at how perfectly suited it was to the situation, how powerful it was, and how it speaks to tragedies well beyond what happened here,” Pender said.
Pender was one of the many people on Virginia Tech’s campus mourning the loss of Nikki Giovanni. She died Monday at the age of 81, after battling cancer.
Pender got to know Giovanni not just as a literary star, but as a person.
“Nikki was an idiosyncratic firebrand, who one minute as all the obituaries are saying, would say something profound and life-changing,, and another minute would make a crack that you know would make you laugh,” Pender said.
Laura Belmonte, dean of Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, recalled Giovanni’s years of work mentoring and challenging students to be their best.
“I have no idea how she did all this transformational work on behalf of students, all while maintaining an incredibly rigorous schedule up until the very last weeks of her life, doing public readings, speaking at book festivals,” she said.
Giovanni first arrived on Virginia Tech’s campus in 1987 and retired in 2022.
Her legacy continues with programs like the Giovanni-Steger Poetry Prize award for undergraduate students, believed to be the largest of its kind in the country.
Even students on campus who did not take one of her classes offered their condolences.
“She helped us out in the community,” said Devon Foskey, a junior. “She was just such a huge inspiration to me and others.”
Belmonte told 10 News that Giovanni kept up a rigorous schedule even in the last months of her life.
“It wasn’t just her role as a poet and writer, she was an incredible advocate for social justice in any number of areas in modern life and fearless and outspoken for her courageous advocacy for marginalized communities,” she said.
Giovanni is survived by her wife Virginia Fowler, who recruited her to campus all those years ago.
She is also survived by her son Thomas, her granddaughter Kai and other family members.