Acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni explains why being talented means being lonely
Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project is a new documentary that looks at the poet’s life and legacy
Nikki Giovanni, 80, is considered one of the world's greatest living poets. She grew up between Ohio and Tennessee and came of age during the Black power and civil rights movements. As a result, her poetry is filled with the spirit of revolution.
Earlier this month, an HBO documentary came out that follows Giovanni's rise as an artist. Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project tracks every milestone in the renowned poet's life, from her big break at Birdland Jazz Club in New York City, to her legendary conversations with James Baldwin, to her surprising interest in space travel and her dream of going to the moon.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Q's Tom Power, Giovanni discusses all this and more, but she also had a lot to say about talent — what it means to have it and what she makes of her own.
Funnily enough, she says she turned to writing precisely because she didn't have any talent.
"Don't laugh, Tom," she says. "What I got early on in terms of aptitude was that I didn't have an aptitude for anything else. I couldn't play the piano, I couldn't sing, I couldn't dance, I'm not athletic. When you can't do anything else, you turn to art, you turn to writing. If you talked to any of the writers, you found out they were all useless. And so what do you do? You watch the people who do, and then you write about the people who are doing the things that perhaps you even wish you could do."
But talent comes with a downside, according to Giovanni. In a clip seen in the documentary, she addresses a room full of students and shares some advice with them.
"If you've got a talent, you're lonely," she tells the students. "What you want to do is go on with your life because at some point you're going to find somebody who is [as] lonely as you are, and then you will build your community."
That advice was inspired by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which the poet was a big fan of as a kid.
"I grew up lonely," Giovanni tells Power. "If I had been Rudolph, by the time Santa Claus came and said, 'Rudolph with your nose so bright' and all of that, I would have told Santa Claus to kiss my behind.
"They saw how lonely Rudolph was because of his red nose. None of the other reindeer would play with him, and they had nothing to say about it until they needed him. So Rudolph was lonely, but he had this talent. And once that talent was needed, they're going to call upon him…. I wanted to say to the people in the room, 'You have to remember Rudolph because he knew he was different, but he knew he was special, and he's going to take care of himself. He's not going to let people make him feel bad about being different, or looking different, or feeling different. He's going to hold on to himself until he finds someone else that feels different.' And that is how you build community."
The full interview with Nikki Giovanni is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Nikki Giovanni produced by Vanessa Greco.
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