Say, poet, how you holding up? Making space for memory

Written by Carmin Wong

My first letter to you comes during a time of profound remembrance, grief, and love for the life and legacy of Nikki Giovanni, who transitioned on late Monday, December 9th. I never imagined I would step into the role of 2024-25 Creative in Residence with a Black arts organization inspired by Nikki’s artistry in the same year she became our literary ancestor.

Nikki—whom I was permitted to call by first name—taught us to wield our voices as instruments of change, to love deeply, and to speak courageously. Her poetry gave us the language to navigate the complexities of being Black and poor in a white-settler-capitalist society, while her interviews and speeches reminded us that Black womxn are the heart of humanity. She taught us the restorative power of love and embodied the courage to confront injustice—qualities [COOS Artistic Director & Co-Founder] Ashleigh Gordon honored when naming this organization after Nikki’s “Poem (for Nina).” “[Nikki’s] poem” Gordon expressed, “beautifully captures the adoration and celebration of the fabric that makes us who we are: our skin.”

I met Nikki during the summer of 2019 at the Nikki Giovanni Legacy Seminar at the historic Furious Flower Poetry Center. As a young, angry graduate student weary from navigating the whiteness of higher education, the experience was a balm. The seminar was created as an intentional space to honor Black poets and writers while they could still receive their flowers.

In Virginia, I stood in the company of giants—Val Gray Ward, members of the Wintergreen Women Writers collective, and Nikki Giovanni. I still hear their voices, sharing memories of Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Aretha Franklin, debating who cooked the best meals, and most importantly, impressing upon us the serious work of Black poetry.

On the same day Nikki was laid to rest, Saturday, December 14th, I found myself in Boston, carrying forward her torch—the prophetic work of Black writers—gathering crowds, filling rooms, listening, sharing, and returning to our craft. At the Goethe-Institut Boston, I joined the incomparable Monthati Masebe in a dialogue where our African and Caribbean womxn’s identities, stories, and histories converged. Together, we explored the archive as a living space—a place to call upon the ancestors, to receive, and to preserve. I described the archive as a meeting ground between history and speculation, a space of possibility, refuge, and reclamation.

What is an archive 

if not a reason to call upon the living?

if not to recollect the past?

if not to challenge the tense of ourselves?

if not sacred?

if not movement and motion?

if not the language in-between?

if not divine, magic, mystery of blood?

if not the ancestors?

if not the being?

if not breath 

if not a practice 

of taking all that was lost?

From oral traditions of storytelling, weaving, and instrument-making, we pushed against the narrow confines of institutional memory, redefining what it means to hold ourselves in remembrance. Offerings from those in attendance deepened our reflection on the role of art in both creating and preserving memory. Afterwards, messages affirmed our collective takeaway: an unapologetic commitment to honoring all forms of knowledge production. Can we seize possession of ourselves before the obstruction of memory?

Two hours slipped away in what felt like moments. Amid discussions of art and (re)memory, Nikki’s spirit lingered in the room. With a copy of Chasing Utopia in one hand—a book inspired by the memory of Nikki’s ‘mommy’—I stood up and began to read.

It is in times like these—when grief and memory merge—that the power of the archive becomes even clearer; it is through our stories, our recollections, and our shared histories that the artists’ voice must continue forward.