First off: Happy (very belated) World Poetry Day!
On Thursday night, I was in a state of rapture. I think I spent a good half hour crying, in total. It was fantastic.
That night, my favorite poet of all time came to Cat’s Cradle to perform their work on World Poetry Day. I’d seen Andrea Gibson once before, but never in such an intimate setting.
The experience was an emotional rollercoaster. I alternated between weeping through poems about mass shootings, depression, and sexual assault and healing through laughter during lighter pieces about hope, empowerment, and love—both of others and the self.
I mentioned in one of my recent blog posts that I’ve grown up on slam poetry, or spoken word. Spoken word is live performance of poetry. When it’s genuine and well-done, it opens viewers up to new perspectives.
Spoken word cuts deep to the heart of important issues and can cultivate empathy—the last of which, I learned Thursday night from Andrea, is linked to higher oxytocin levels. Put simply, empathy makes you happier.
Quality spoken word evokes intense emotion, whether that be sadness, anger, joy, awe, or even amusement. My favorites are the multifaceted poems that elicit multiple of these emotions. Andrea Gibson was one of the first poets I ever encountered whose poems were like this.
Gibson is a queer, nonbinary performance poet whose words completely overtook me from a young age. They have been touring full-time for over a decade, despite extreme stage fright and panic attacks. They’re one of my favorite people on the planet.
In honor of this experience and World Poetry Day, here are 11 of Andrea Gibson’s best poems (of which there are many, many more):
1. “The Nutritionist”
The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said The trauma said don’t write this poem.
Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.
My bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poem.”
…
You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame.
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.
I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
I have never heard a more apt description of depression than this poem. The tragic rise of suicide cases in the U.S. has been linked to loneliness and depression. This poem is a necessary reminder that those who are depressed are not alone in these feelings. It has the potential to touch so many people and provide them the solidarity they need to keep going.
Gibson ends the piece with a simple request: “You, stay here with me… Live, live, live.” It makes me bawl like a baby and is one of my all-time favorites.
2. “Birthday, for Jenn”
I suppose I love this life
In spite of my clenched fist
…
I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys,
The same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
…
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier’s gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.
This poem is full of infinite sadness, love, and hope. I tried to pick out the most striking parts, but you really just have to listen to it in its entirety to get the full experience.
3. “Orlando”
When the first responders entered the Pulse Nightclub after the massacre in Orlando, they walked through the horrific scene of bodies and called out, “If you are alive, raise your hands.”
I was sleeping in a hotel in the Midwest at the time, but I imagine in that exact moment, my hand twitched in my sleep.
Some unconscious part of me aware that I had a pulse
that I was alive.
This is only the beginning of a poem that makes me gasp for breath the whole time. Its take on the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history is absolutely gut-wrenching.
This is not the only poem Gibson has written about guns and shootings (if you click that link, grab tissues). This one, however, tackles both the horror of a mass shooting and its effects on the LGBTQ+ community.
One line hits especially hard: “Half of us are already dead to our families before we die.” Gibson grew up in a religious small town, attending a Catholic school, with a family who struggled to accept them, growing up. With just 12 words, Gibson conveys the pain of growing up queer in a world that rejects their identity, and they don’t hold back.
4. “Fight For Love”
My first exposure to this poem was live on Thursday night, and it made me so, so happy. As someone who always argues with the ones I love, it was very relatable. The humor in it also helped with recovery from the heavier poems Gibson performed, like “Orlando”.
The couple performs it with so much energy, and it’s a joy to behold. I’m not even going to try to pull a quote from it, because it won’t capture the pure fun of this poem.
5. “When the Bough Breaks”
It’s two a.m.
The emergency room psychiatrist looks up from his clipboard
with eyes paid to care
and asks me if I see people who aren’t really there.
…
Doctor, our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there
It’s that we ignore the ones who are
Aaaand back to pain. This is an older poem, but it’s timeless. I struggled not to copy paste the whole thing, here. It takes on so many issues in such a brief period of time. Just watch the poem; I can’t describe it.
If this post feels like whiplash so far, good. That’s exactly how it felt Thursday night. The alternation between heavy and light poems is basically Gibson’s brand. I think they seek to mirror life, in that way.
6. “Jellyfish”
Teach me why the candle wax says thank you to the flame
Tell me how your mother says your name like an orchard going bloom
A doctor once told me I feel too much
I said so does God
That’s why you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon
This poem is just beautiful. It’s full of whimsy and exposed, aching tenderness. I adore it.
7. “A Letter to my Dog, Exploring the Human Condition”
You never criticize me for being too uptight to let my hair down even though you can let yours all the way out
All over my black hoodie, my black pants, the couch, the car, the chair
The online merch store that sells my books and T-shirts wrote me a letter saying, “We can’t continue to sell your products if they continue to be covered in so much of your dog’s hair”
I just assumed anything covered in you would increase in value
The raw love in this is breathtaking. Gibson refers to their dog, Squash, as “my beating heart, with fur and legs”. After my dog died last year, this poem grew a bit of a painful edge for me. But its funny lines more than make up for it (for instance: “I know I let you down every day I choose not to murder the vacuum.”)
8. “For Eli”
Not all casualties come home in body bags.
…
One-third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
And we have the nerve to Support Our Troops with pretty yellow ribbons while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
…
Jeff Lucy came back from Iraq and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose
The night before he died he spent 45 minutes on his fathers lap
Rocking like a baby, rocking like daddy, save me
And don’t think for a minute he too isn’t collateral damage
This poem breaks me down every time I hear it, and I’ve heard it many times since I first discovered it years ago.
Gibson wrote it when the Iraq War was still going on, so the statistic is somewhat outdated, but the issues are still very real. Far too many veterans suffer from mental illness and substance abuse as a result of their trauma. We have systems in place to help them, but not enough.
9. “Maybe I Need You”
Love isn’t always magic.
Sometimes, it’s just melting.
…
I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now, it doesn’t matter how well I say grace
If I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat
So this is my wheat field.
You can have every acre, love.
This poem is pure goosebumps. I’ve never heard anything else that captures heartbreak so well. Just hit play and let yourself be swept away.
10. “Ashes”
And all they knew of hate
Is that it couldn’t beat the love out of me
“Explosive” is right. As Gibson explains at the beginning of this video, this poem is about the murder of a gay soldier, who was burned to death. Gibson brings in religious themes almost immediately, highlighting the hypocrisy of those using it to justify hatred.
Vitriolic religious language surrounding homosexuality has often included the phrase “burn in hell“. That the perpetrators of this crime burned their victim alive is a striking parallel to this phrase.
In 2017, the number of reported hate crimes in the U.S. rose by 17 percent. Years later, the message of this poem is still far too relevant.
11. “Prism”
My mother swore she could feel me kicking weeks before my feet formed
That’s how hard my heart beat —
and it still does.
But they say the womb is where we learn love,
is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck
…
You can call it love, but you know Einstein called himself a pacifist when he built the bomb
…
You have to understand
When it hurt to love her,
it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night.
But I had to see.
This last piece is about the power of love to both sustain and destroy. I have never experienced a love like the one Gibson describes here, but they still manage to make me feel it in every inch of my body.
This is why I love spoken word so much: I can listen to an experience I’ve never come anywhere close to, and I can feel like I’m going through it with the poet as I listen. The closest experience to this that I have found in any other medium has been novels, but they are rarely as immersive.
Spoken word is one of my favorite things because it allows you a glimpse into the poet’s soul that can change your entire perspective. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.