Poet Nikki Giovanni will deliver a lecture next week at the University of Kansas, KU announced Monday.

Giovanni, called one of the most acclaimed poets to emerge from the Civil Rights Era and Black Arts Movement, will present “Poetry: A New Conversation” at 6 p.m. April 4 at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union, 1301 Jayhawk Blvd. A book signing will follow her lecture.

An open forum with students is also scheduled for noon April 5 at the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center.

Nikki Giovanni

Giovanni’s visit to KU is presented by the Project on the History of Black Writing and other KU units.

“For a lot of us, Nikki Giovanni’s passion, fearlessness in breaking the silence and speaking the truth became a model we needed. She took poetry to new heights with a voice that has never wavered,” Maryemma Graham, University Distinguished Professor of English and director of the Project on the History of Black Writing at KU, said in KU’s news release. “As her title says, we do need to have a new conversation, one with fearless truth.”

Since 1987, Giovanni has taught at Virginia Tech University, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. Her first volume of poems, “Black Feeling, Black Talk” (1967), sold more than 10,000 copies in its first year.