‘I want everything you have ever tried to wash away’
– ‘Emergency Contact’, Andrea Gibson

I first heard of Andrea Gibson in my last year of uni. I was sitting in my mate’s living room at 2 in the morning, pissed and eating Doritos, having bumped into her and a mutual friend outside the student’s union a few hours before. As I have FABULOUS friends, conversation soon turned to poetry, feminism, and gay rights, and our friend mentioned a favourite poem on gay marriage, ‘I Do’ by Andrea Gibson. Literary minded lesbian that I am, the friend assumed that I’d have heard of her, and was scandalised to find that I’d never read anything Gibson had written, or seen any of her (numerous) performance videos on Youtube. Half an hour later, we had decamped to the living room of my mate’s dorm where, after removing our bras (and genuinely having to talk our friend out of burning hers and/or throwing it in the canal near our campus), she got her laptop out and showed me ‘Maybe I Need You’, one of the most beautiful bits of performance poetry I have ever seen. I am still very proud of Drunk Grace for not crying.

Andrea Gibson is an American queer activist and performance poet who writes on a variety of topics very close to my little queermo heart, including gender presentation, homophobia, mental health, love, sex, and dogs. I especially love her poem about dogs. She writes beautifully on human relationships, and her love poems are some of the most brutally honest, gorgeous, and painful bits of writing I have ever read. Her power comes from vulnerability. She is not afraid to bleed in twelve-point font, every insecurity, fear, messy break-up in ink for all the world to read. I was lucky enough to see her perform at The Deaf Institute in Manchester this year, and her words are even more powerful in person. Although she works on the page, she is definitely a poet whose work is most effective when heard out loud, spoken by a visibly nervous yet compelling Gibson who holds the room’s attention without seemingly having to try. I left the gig more than a little in love with her, hugging my signed copy of Pansy the whole way home.

With six albums and two full length collections of poetry available, not to mention the myriad of videos on Youtube, Andrea Gibson has plenty of material available for anyone who wants to check her out. But keep a box of tissues handy. You’ll thank me later.

Visit Andrea Gibson at her website or check out this awesome performance on Youtube.