Nikki Giovanni's Response to the Virginia Tech Tragedy

Nikki Giovanni is one of the most powerful living poets. She is a professor at Virginia Tech who, last year, had Seung-Hui Cho in her class. Here's a brief blurb. The video is embedded below. This from boingboing.net:

Video Link: Nikki Giovanni, an author and poet and professor at Virginia Tech, closed out the memorial convocation yesterday with an amazing and moving spoken word poem. The entire crowd at Cassell Coliseum breaks out into a "Let's Go Hokies!" chant afterwards. There's a shot of the football coach, Frank Beamer, crying.

Professor Giovanni actually requested that the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, be removed from her class when she taught him -- and threatened resignation if he wasn't. She also has "thug life" tattooed on her in Tupac's memory. (Not relevant, but cool.)

We'll probably watch this in class today (tomorrow), as it speaks to both poetry and social consciousness. If you're interested, I have one of her books of poetry in my class, Blues for All The Changes. She's got a great poem about Allen Iverson that I'll post tomorrow, as I can't seem to find it online.