Andrea Gibson, a poet known for their ability to drill into the details of a moment and to draw those experiences out in captivating spoken word performances, died Monday.
Gibson’s poetry was rooted in real life, and spoke to issues that they thought affected everyday Coloradans, including queer rights, political division, environmental issues, gun reform and the health care system. Their ongoing interactions in the American health care system fueled their work with Power to the Patients, a national movement to push hospitals to publish prices online so that patients can make informed decisions about their health care.
They blended everyday issues with accessible language, attempting to lower the barrier to entry to poetry.
“I don’t write poetry that I think is hard to understand,” Gibson, who used they/them pronouns, told The Sun in 2023. “What I think the spoken word movement has done for poetry is that it created poems that you don’t need a Ph.D. to understand, that you don’t need a high school diploma to understand.”
Gibson, who was 49 and lived in Boulder, had been treated for ovarian cancer since 2021. They were named the Colorado poet laureate in 2023, a role created in 1919 to spread a love and appreciation of poetry throughout the state.
Gov. Jared Polis wrote in the announcement that Gibson was selected for their “fierce conviction in inspiring others to pursue art and take action toward solving social issues.”
In a tribute on the social media site X on Monday, Polis said Gibson was “renowned for inspiring poetry, advocacy for arts in education, and a unique ability to connect with the vast and diverse poetry lovers of Colorado.”
Gibson was particularly proud of living and working in Colorado, and told The Sun that receiving the Colorado poet laureate designation was even more impactful than receiving a national award. Everything they knew about poetry, they learned from Colorado poets, they said.
In August 2024 Gibson received a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to develop an anthology of Colorado poet laureates. Proceeds from sales of the anthology will be used to ensure the future of the Colorado Poet Laureate position.
Gibson had been writing poetry since they were a child and started working as a full-time poet in 2005, when they hired a manager and quit their job at a Montessori school.
The first few years were rough, Gibson admitted to The Sun, noting that they had to figure out how to translate their poetic talents into currency — they eventually learned how to charge for shows and price their chapbooks.
They’d go on to tour the world as a spoken-word artist and author seven books. They won the Denver Grand Slam four times over, the Independent Publishers Award twice, and the first Women’s World Poetry Slam.
They also starred in the award-winning documentary, “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a film about their marriage to poet Megan Falley, and how the couple dealt with Gibson’s cancer diagnosis in 2021. The documentary, produced by comic Tig Notaro, won the Festival Favorite award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been on the festival circuit.
Rather than falling into despair after the cancer diagnosis, they doubled down on the vibrancy of their life.
“It changed me,” Gibson told The Colorado Sun in 2023, after receiving the poet laureate position.
Among those changes, Gibson wrote about the way their diagnosis changed their relationship with gender. Gibson had long been considered an activist in the queer community, and in a 2018 interview told Go Mag that activism inspired their art, and queerness impacted every part of their creative process.
They also channeled this sense of change into a poem about sitting next to a man in a MAGA hat, called, “MAGA Hat in the Chemo Room.”
“These interactions with people who I frankly might be afraid of — you know, I see a MAGA hat and as a queer person get scared, at times — but then I would be in this environment and it would be these very tender, loving interactions with strangers,” Gibson told The Sun. “And I started thinking, ‘What can we do? Like where is the bridge here, is there a bridge?’”
In the Facebook post announcing the poet’s death, Falley wrote: “Over the last four years, they danced with their diagnosis, and continually aimed their internal compass toward joy. One of the last things Andrea said on this plane was, ‘I fucking loved my life.’”
In December 2023, while touring Colorado as the poet laureate, Gibson wrote a poem called “Love Letter From the Afterlife,” an offering for those grieving a loved one during the holiday season.
“My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving,” Gibson wrote in “Love Letter.” “When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before.”
Reports the death of an individual, providing an account of the person’s life including their achievements, any controversies in which they were involved, and reminiscences by people who knew them.
