Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. We lost a big one this week. The poet,

Nikki Giovanni. She was a defining voice of the Black Arts movement and easily one of the most

prolific. Her first poetry collection came out in 1968 and she pretty much never stopped writing.

She published more than two dozen poetry collections with one on the way next year. Since she died, I've been thinking a lot about this interview

she did with NPR in 2013. In it, she talks a lot about writing as a way of getting through

grief, which she had her fair share of. See, she also taught at Virginia

Tech. And if you're doing the math, this interview would have taken place just a handful of years

after a student shot and killed 32 people on campus there. And Pierre's Michelle Martin

asks her how she's been doing since then. And Giovanni says this really powerful thing about killing being the antithesis of imagination.

That's ahead.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our our new show, Sources and Methods.

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Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Now we have a treat for your ears, especially if you are a poetry lover.

Award-winning writer Nikki Giovanni is one of the best known and most celebrated poets of our time,

known for her accessible yet beautifully descriptive writing about home, family, friends, politics, and even food.

Giovanni currently serves as a university distinguished professor

of English at Virginia Tech. She's the author of 28 books. Her latest Chasing Utopia is a combination

of essays and poetry. It is out today. And she's with us now to tell us more. Thank you so much for

joining us. I'm delighted to be here. The title of this new book, Chasing Utopia.

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