BY YASMIN ANDREWS ’22
In their Feb. 17 show, “An Evening with Andrea Gibson: Right Now I Love You Forever,” poet Andrea Gibson addressed developing self-love, falling in love, falling out of love, love in times of tragedy and the many other ways love takes shape, both in their own life and in the queer community.
The event was billed as “a show that is for the hopeless romantics and the absolutely hopeless.” Backtracked by a piano and occasionally accompanied by girlfriend Megan Falley, Gibson performed to a sold out crowd, which included three ex-lovers, at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke on Monday night. The room was packed and every chair had a lucky penny on it.
“The energy of the room was so uplifting,” Cait Mallery ’22 said. “Being surrounded by a sea of other mostly queer folks listening to poetry about learning to love others and yourself was the best way I could imagine spending a [Monday] night.”
Though there is a strong queer presence at Mount Holyoke, the intergenerational audience highlighted how the queer community in the Pioneer Valley expands far outside the Five College Consortium. On a Valley-wide level, identifying as queer connects you to a large network of people you may never truly know, but feel kin with due to similar life experiences.
“I loved being in a room with so many queer people, all there to laugh and cry and listen to love poems together,” Sophie Clingan ’22 said. “It’s a tender and beautiful thing to experience.”
The show was tender and raw as Gibson’s poetry covered their first love, a shooting, the time they tried to learn to juggle and the fights they have with Falley. They are a master of shifting between poems with light banter and storytelling, but admitted to the audience that they were unsure of including “Orlando.”
This poem was released on the album “Hey Galaxy” in 2018 and addressed the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting with powerful lines like, “The massacre of people who did not leave the dance floor when they heard gunshots because they thought they were just the beats of a song.” Audience members saw Gibson crying on stage throughout the poem, and there was a collective moment of silence at the end.
To lighten the mood, Gibson told the audience about how they learned to enact self-love and their struggle with thinking that loving yourself meant you had to do so 24/7. They explored the idea of being the love of their own life in the poem “Boomerang Valentine,” with what Gibson themself called a “good line” mid-show; “I am standing on my front step / Ringing my own doorbell / Waiting for me to answer, so I can hand myself a mason jar full of water lilies I have rescued from a millionaire’s Monet.”
“Their poetry is simultaneously uplifting and sad at times — I’ve been a fan of them for years now, and no matter how long it’s been I feel like I can go back to their poetry and find something that applies to my current situation,” Mallery said.
That night you could feel how each poem touched the hearts of the audience in a personal way, forming a deep sense of community in the room.