Nikky Finney: Up-Close and Personal
Nikky Finney is a black women poet who has challenged and redefined what southern means for our time. She believes that stories are important, that they keep us alive and allow us to transition to the next chapter of life. Finney is the author of Head off and Split, a book we have been reading in class. Watching this book-reading by Nikky Finney has helped the book come alive and has magnified all of it’s meaning. Seeing her read her own poems and share personal stories inspires one to take the poetry to heart, to let it be real, and to learn great life lessons from another human being’s point of view. What makes Finney an award-winning poet is her ability to turn memories into poems, the way she writes …show more content…
The memory she shared was of the time that she saw Lorraine Hansberry perform in the Morris College gymnasium. Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work and the performance Nikky Finney saw that day was the play, A Raisin in the Sun, which highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Finney was merely fourteen years old when she heard Lorraine Hansberry say this, “I am a writer, and I am going to write.” Those words changed Finney’s life and have inspired her writing ever since. These are the words she remembers when she is trying to convey a memory in a beautiful and poetic way. These are the words she remembers when she is having a hard time putting pen to paper, and these are the words she remembered when she was writing Head off and …show more content…
Of course, in the beginning when Finney is physically going to the fish market, that is a true memory of the mind, but what about the part of the poem that explains a girl becoming a women? Would that experience not be a memory of the body? Not only does Finney use memories of the body here to write, but she also knows that we as readers will be able to relate to this natural phenomenon called puberty. Taping into to memories is a great way to relate to an audience of any kind. People love story telling and they love anything about real-life and hard times. Finney recognized this about humanity and began to write this
Nikky Finney is a black women poet who has challenged and redefined what southern means for our time. She believes that stories are important, that they keep us alive and allow us to transition to the next chapter of life. Finney is the author of Head off and Split, a book we have been reading in class. Watching this book-reading by Nikky Finney has helped the book come alive and has magnified all of it’s meaning. Seeing her read her own poems and share personal stories inspires one to take the poetry to heart, to let it be real, and to learn great life lessons from another human being’s point of view. What makes Finney an award-winning poet is her ability to turn memories into poems, the way she writes …show more content…
The memory she shared was of the time that she saw Lorraine Hansberry perform in the Morris College gymnasium. Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work and the performance Nikky Finney saw that day was the play, A Raisin in the Sun, which highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Finney was merely fourteen years old when she heard Lorraine Hansberry say this, “I am a writer, and I am going to write.” Those words changed Finney’s life and have inspired her writing ever since. These are the words she remembers when she is trying to convey a memory in a beautiful and poetic way. These are the words she remembers when she is having a hard time putting pen to paper, and these are the words she remembered when she was writing Head off and …show more content…
Of course, in the beginning when Finney is physically going to the fish market, that is a true memory of the mind, but what about the part of the poem that explains a girl becoming a women? Would that experience not be a memory of the body? Not only does Finney use memories of the body here to write, but she also knows that we as readers will be able to relate to this natural phenomenon called puberty. Taping into to memories is a great way to relate to an audience of any kind. People love story telling and they love anything about real-life and hard times. Finney recognized this about humanity and began to write this