A Witness to History: 2011 Poet Laureate and University of Kentucky Professor Nikky Finney Talks about Indian Pencils and Blackboards

"Head Off and Split" is the book that won Nikky Finney the most prestigious prize. It is also the book that shows her great artistic skills. The poet laureate uses ordinary objects to bring out the subliminal and eternal. Jericho Brown captures the essence of her book of poetry this way, ""Again, Nikky Finney manipulates into music the words readers use to see, hear, and understand a soul's history. Head Off & Split is as Southern as it is American, as feminist as it is human, as black as it is a tide of colors knowing no bounds..."

Here is what others are saying about her and her new book. Kwame Dawes wrote, "With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement."

Readers will be attracted by the beauty of language and the mastery with which the author treats each one of her subjects. Meena Alexander summs it up this way, "In Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split the beauty of language soars and saves us even as we skirt the raw edge of terror. And something rare and precious is restored, a light, circling movement of the spirit. This is poetry to give thanks for."

At the opening of Nikky Finney's National Book Award Acceptance speech, she says, "We beging with history..." In a historic and literal way, the poet laureate was right in acknowledging history, the most recent and past history, the history of those who had fought in the past, those whose body was abused and mistreated for the gains of men who thought they could own other men. Indeed, "We begin with history..." brings back the sacrifices of men and women like the author's parents who had to decide to invest in education, in the literary things that were forbidden to black slaves and could have them killed. "We begin with history..." was and is for ever present when her father, retired chief justice Earnest A Finney had to decide difficult cases in an era when Jim Crow and discrimination were running rampant in the country. The retired Chief Justice knew that he had to bring his contribution to pillar of civil rights movement, a potent sign of history.

History is ongoing.
Nikky likes history and anything about history..."I am incredibly drawn to history; personal history, American history, Southern history, family history,
the history of a community, the history of secrets, the history that has gone missing, the history that has
been told by the lion hunter but not the lion, the history of pencils, of loss, of tenderness, the history of
what the future just might be if we would only..."

It is that sense of history that led Nikky to pen a poem about Strom Thurmond titled "Dancing with Strom..." She prefaced the poem with this quote from Thurmond, Thurmond's quote was spoken in 1948: “I want to
tell you, ladies and gentleman, there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break
down segregation and accept the Negro into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and
into our churches.”

"Black people were the only people in the United States who were ever officially forbidden to be literate..." said Nikky Finney in her acceptance speech...." said Nikky Finney in her speech. "

"I am now officially speechless," concluded Nikky.


Where can you find Nikky's books: www.nikkyfinney.net and on Amazon.com