Nikki Giovanni was one of the greatest poets of her generation and it was an honour to sit with her for a special episode of The Last Bohemians, recorded in Spring 2024 in London, while she was promoting what would become her final anthology, Poems: 1968-2020 (Penguin Classics). When we saw she was in town, we jumped at the chance to speak with her and we're very grateful to have been granted an audience.

A poet, author and activist, Nikki was considered a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s, which ran parallel to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in America. It included notable writers and artists like Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou and another of our Last Bohemians, Betye Saar, many of whom she counted as friends. Just imagine that dinner party!

Nikki was born in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, grew up in Ohio, and self-published her first two books in 1968. In the 70s, she was selling out huge concert venues and started blending gospel music with spoken word, on albums like Truth is On The Way, foreshadowing the birth of hip-hop. Her poems spoke boldly of justice and liberation but had love and joy at their centre, and she released over 30 books of them.

It’s strange and sad to speak about Nikki Giovanni in the past tense: she passed away on 9 December 2024, aged 81, of complications from lung cancer, just before this edit was finished.

We’ve sat on this episode for a while, unsure what to do with it and when to release it to the world. But we think you should have it in time for International Women’s Day 2025. Since 2019, we’ve either launched a series or a one-off around this time and felt that, with everything going on in the world at the moment, it’s the moment to send this special conversation out there.

And wow, does Nikki have some things to say, as she discusses becoming a success, her famous friendships with Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone, the power of anger, her self-care routine and why poetry is a serious business indeed.

////CREDITS////

This episode is hosted and exec-produced by Kate Hutchinson, with audio production and editing by Kit Callin. It was recorded at Spiritland Studios, London.

The poem you hear is 'Serious Poems' by Nikki Giovanni, part of the anthology book Poems: 1968-2020, out now on Penguin Classics.

The music used is 'Only Instrumental' by Broke For Free.

A huge thank you to Juliette Morrison at Penguin and Virginia Fowler for helping to make this interview happen.

For the final episode of The Last Bohemians: LA, supported by Audio-Technica, we meet French fashion disruptor and true original, Michéle Lamy. She’s been married to the designer Rick Owens, her former pattern cutter, since 2006 and is often referred to as his 'muse'. But Michéle is a chameleonic creative in her own right, forever staging art happenings, musical collaborations and style projects around the world, as well as co-designing the furniture for the Rick Owens line.

She’s so in-demand that she’s tricky to track down: we did this interview partly in London, at Claridges in Mayfair, and partly at the Chateau Marmont in LA, the city Michéle lived in for 26 years until the early 2000s. In those days, she was better known as the owner and host of cult Hollywood nightspot Les Deux Cafe, where anyone who’s anyone would dine as Michéle performed smoky jazz numbers in her thick drawl.

Now Michéle is more nomadic, splitting her time between Los Angeles and Paris, and attracting beautiful freaks wherever she goes. A gothic style icon (she’s been called a vampire, ageless, the ultimate eccentric…), her signature look is ink-dipped fingers, a line of kohl on her forehead, a voluminous outfit and a cigarette always in her hand. Listen out for her many bangles too, which clank as she speaks!In this hypnotic episode, Michéle talks to us about the influence of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, her style awakening in the Moroccan desert, how she decides who to collaborate with, her unlikely kinship with Kim Kardashian, why she loves boxing, how she got gold teeth, following her instincts and the importance of “finding your tribe”.

That’s it for the LA series but listen out for some bonus episodes very soon.

CREDITSFollow us: instagram.com/thelastbohemianspodPresenter and Exec Producer: Kate HutchinsonEditors: Holly Fisher and Mariana Sousa AguiarAdditional production: Sefa NykiPhotography: Matilda Hill-JenkinsWith thanks to Janet Fischgrund and everyone at OwenscorpAll music by Mara Carlyle with the exception of 'Laman' by Imdukal'N' El Hussain Safir and The Last Bohemians theme music by Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog Jones.

ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIANSJournalist and broadcaster Kate Hutchinson launched The Last Bohemians in 2019, pairing the audio with stunning portraits by photographer Laura Kelly. It featured 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. The series won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards.Season two featured folk legend Judy Collins; British fashion icon Zandra Rhodes, dealing with the aftermath of losing her lover while celebrating 50 years in fashion; anarcho-punk innovator and illustrator Gee Vaucher; and the controversial witch at the heart of the 1970s occult boom, Maxine Sanders. In 2021, The Last Bohemians launched a lockdown special with performance artist Marina Abramović; it returned in 2022 with the UK’s greatest living painter, Maggi Hambling, as well as Bowie’s former best friend Dana Gillespie and theatre actor Cleo Sylvestre, and launched an LA series, supported by Audio-Technica.

ABOUT AUDIO-TECHNICAIn 1962, with a vision of producing high-quality audio for everyone, Audio-Technica’s founder Hideo Matsushita created the first truly affordable phono cartridge, the AT-1 in Shinjuku, Japan. Since then, Audio-Technica has grown into a world-renowned company devoted to Audio Excellence at every level, expanding the product range to include headphones, microphones and turntables. Audio-Technica’s commitment to the user experience and their devotion to high quality design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution has placed them at the forefront of the industry for the last 60 years.

Penny Slinger was a mover and shaker in Swinging London's art scene – though you might not have heard of her. She went to Chelsea Art School at the height of the Pop Art boom and, inspired by Max Ernst, went on to mix up self-portrait, collage, film and sculpture to create surreal and feminist images that still provoke today. Among these were her “full frontal collages”, including ones where Penny appears inside a wedding cake, the slice between her legs removed. Her 1977 collage masterpiece, An Exorcism, meanwhile, evoked the darkness of the English psyche, stitching together ghoulish images of the countryside, genitals, nuns and manor houses. In the UK, Penny counted the photographer Lee Miller among her friends and, at one point, lived in a turret in Soho, where her boyfriend – the counterculture film-maker Peter Whitehead – kept falcons. How’s that for bohemian! Penny appeared in experimental films and wrote a number of books on themes of sex, mysticism, eroticism and inner goddesses, including groundbreaking books of her collages and poetry, such as 50% The Invisible Woman. But after a solo show in New York in 1982, she abandoned the art world, tired of its sexism and narrow-mindedness. She moved first to the Caribbean, then to Northern California and finally settled in LA. It isn’t until recently that Penny’s work has been rediscovered. In 2009, she was included in the Angels of Anarchy show of female surrealists in Manchester and she was the subject of a 2017 documentary by Richard Kovitch. In this episode of The Last Bohemians: LA, supported by Audio-Technica, Penny covers a range of topics, including her sexual and sensual liberation, finding her voice in a male-dominated art scene, starring in the only feature film directed by a woman in the 1970s, how she hopes to see a retrospective in her lifetime and how desire doesn’t diminish with age...

CREDITS

Follow us: instagram.com/thelastbohemianspodPresenter: Kate HutchinsonProducer: Holly FisherPhotography: Lisa Jelliffe.With thanks to Zoe Flowers.Theme music: Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog Jones

ABOUT AUDIO-TECHNICA

In 1962, with a vision of producing high-quality audio for everyone, Audio-Technica’s founder Hideo Matsushita created the first truly affordable phono cartridge, the AT-1 in Shinjuku, Japan. Since then, Audio-Technica has grown into a world-renowned company devoted to Audio Excellence at every level, expanding the product range to include headphones, microphones and turntables. Audio-Technica’s commitment to the user experience and their devotion to high quality design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution has placed them at the forefront of the industry for the last 60 years.

ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIANS

Journalist and broadcaster Kate Hutchinson launched The Last Bohemians in 2019, pairing the audio with stunning portraits by photographer Laura Kelly. It featured 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. The series won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards.Season two featured folk legend Judy Collins; British fashion icon Zandra Rhodes, dealing with the aftermath of losing her lover while celebrating 50 years in fashion; anarcho-punk innovator and illustrator Gee Vaucher; and the controversial witch at the heart of the 1970s occult boom, Maxine Sanders. In 2021, The Last Bohemians launched a lockdown special with performance artist Marina Abramović; it returned in 2022 with the UK’s greatest living painter, Maggi Hambling, as well as Bowie’s former best friend Dana Gillespie and theatre actor Cleo Sylvestre, and launched an LA series, supported by Audio-Technica.