The recent passing of Nikki Giovanni reminded me of the first poetry book that I ever bought. Edited by Dudley Randall and published by his Detroit-based Broadside Press, the slim volume BLACK POETRY was released in 1969, the year I turned 13 and began wearing an Afro. The anthology collects works by Harlem Renaissance poets such as jean Toomer, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes and voices from Black Arts Movement, including Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, Clarence Major, Amira Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) and Haki Madhubuti (then known as Don Lee).

I bought the book during a lunch break from my part-time job at one of Baltimore’s downtown department stores. After a hamburger or kosher hot dog at the Earl of Sandwich, I’d usually head to either the Enoch Pratt Central Library or Sherman’s Bookstore and Newstand. There, I bought Black Panther newspapers, a haiku anthology, Pablo Neruda’s The Captain’s Verses and BLACK POETRY.

While in college and soon after, I attended poetry readings by Giovanni, Sanchez and Madhubuti. And, I was awed by the Ntozake Shange’s innovative play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide (When the Rainbow is Enough). Shange’s so-called choreopoem showed me that poetry belongs not only on the page but also onstage. Poets of the Black Arts Movement showed me that poetry could be political and validated my own emerging voice.

As a budding author, I sometimes encountered Nikki Giovanni at literary events where attendees mistook me for her. I could not have been more flattered. With pride and gratitude, I dedicate my term as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate to the poets of the Black Arts Movement who inspired a younger me.