Andrea Gibson, "a master of spoken-word poetry who cultivated legions of admirers with intensely personal, often political works exploring gender, love and a personal four-year fight with terminal ovarian cancer," died July 14, the New York Times reported. They were 49. Gibson "was among the leading voices in a resurgence of spoken-word, or slam, poetry in the mid-2000s, centered in cafes and on college campuses around the country."
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| Andrea Gibson | |
They published seven books, primarily poetry, along with seven albums, all while touring. Despite chronic stage fright, Gibson performed shows as long as 90 minutes. From their poem "Ode to the Public Panic Attack":
To step towards the terror.
Its promised jaw.
To scrape your boots on the welcome mat.
To tell yourself fear
Is the seat of fearlessness.
Even when you're falling through the ice that is never
Been weakness. That is the bravest thing I have ever done in my life.
The documentary film Come See Me in the Good Light (2025), directed by Ryan White, focused on Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, during Gibson's struggle with cancer. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year and won the Festival Favorite Award.
"Poetry and art in general can be this amazing connective tool," Gibson told Westword in 2023. "It engenders empathy. And sometimes I can forget this, but adding beauty to the world is a thing unto itself. We were born astonished. We should never grow out of our astonishment."
Gibson's books include Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns (2008), The Madness Vase (2012), Pansy (2015), Take Me With You (2018), Lord of the Butterflies (2018), How Poetry Can Change Your Heart (with Megan Falley, 2019), and You Better Be Lightning (2021).
Recalling earlier developing their own gender and sexual identity, mostly in secret, Gibson wrote in Out magazine in 2017: "I had a solid idea of what I would lose if I came out and I knew it would be excruciating, but not more excruciating than losing myself. So after a long time of mastering how to leave the pronouns out of all my love poems--I finally started telling people about the softness of my love's face."
In 2021, Gibson received a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and began chemotherapy. In their 2023 poem "In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don't lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down," they wrote:
Jenny says when people ask if she's out of the woods,
she tells them she'll never be out of the woods,
says there is something lovely about the woods.
I know how to build a survival shelter
from fallen tree branches, packed mud,
and pulled moss. I could survive forever
on death alone. Wasn't it death that taught me
to stop measuring my life span by length,
but by width?
In 2023, Colorado Governor Jared Polis named Gibson the state's poet laureate. Colorado Public Radio noted that Gibson "wrote that they were initially worried about accepting the post because their health would limit their ability to do in-person events, and afraid they might not live through their two-year term. But they decided to take the role in part to open up possibilities for more chronically ill and disabled poets."
They observed: "I've been very public about my cancer journey, not because I want people to know that I'm mortal, but because I so badly want others to know that they are. Knowing that I could die any day saved my life. Understanding, really understanding the brevity of this existence, has given me more gratitude, awe, and joy than I thought would be possible for me in this lifetime. I wish that joy for everyone. (Minus the cancer.)."