Andrea Gibson is an amazing queer, spoken-word poet who can make you weep with a heart-wrenching love poem and then swiftly inspire you to action with a powerful political poem. Their latest album, Hey Galaxy, combines these themes perfectly. Gibson sat down with Here to talk about the album (which they're currently on tour performing), identity, and art.

Here: What was it like for you to put this album together in the Trump era?

Andrea Gibson: Ugh, I still hate that we have to say "Trump era." In all my years of doing spoken word, I’ve never made an album that was just love poems, so I wanted to do that. I was so excited to create this thing that was just all about love; if I had my way I would only ever write love poems.

Then he got elected and I just couldn’t stomach not speaking to the truth more directly. So I stopped in my tracks and started writing more political stuff. In terms of keeping the love on the album, I never want to put out an album that doesn’t have love poems on it. But that’s sadly also political because I’m talking about a woman.

H: I’d love to talk about your gender journey. What parallels has your identity had to your writing? How has one informed the other?

AG: When I was a kid I never felt like a boy or a girl, but I never knew I had permission to feel that way. "Tomboy" was the closest word to what I felt like I was, and then I identified as a butch dyke when I came out, but I never really felt that butch.

And then maybe twelve years ago someone said the word "genderqueer." I had never heard that word, but as soon as I did, I felt like I knew myself in a way that I hadn’t before. That got me thinking about how much language influences our relationship with ourselves, and I felt so grateful that I am a writer and a poet, and I started exploring with my own writing.

With my gender it was never that I came to the page knowing who I was and wrote it down, but I would write to unpack my gender and learn my gender. I don’t think I would know myself as much as I do without writing. It’s been this constant process, and it’s one that I don’t think is over; I’m always curious about who I’m going to be in a couple of years, how I’m going to feel about my body and my gender. I just try to stay open and the writing process has really helped me with that.

Leslie Feinberg says that gender is the poetry each of us makes with the language we’ve been given or taught, and so you think about language and how much it impacts our perception. It makes me so thankful to be a poet and have this route to figuring myself out.

H: Can you tell me about the experience that made you choose spoken word specifically?

AG: Honestly the only way I can explain it is to say how much I love the art form of spoken word. The first time I saw it I fell in love with it, the connection between the poet and the audience. I was so moved that the poet was actually looking the audience in the eyes, as if a conversation was being had even if the audience didn’t realize they were a part of it — they were with their energy.

H: What about the first time you performed?

AG: The first time I got on the mic was when I got my heart broken. I went to a poetry reading and I was so devastated I didn’t even care, I didn’t have anything else to lose, so I got up and read a poem. The paper was shaking so hard in my hands you could hardly hear my voice over it.

But then the next week I went to my first slam and I could hardly sit in my chair because I couldn’t believe something like that existed -- and I was so excited that nobody was reading on paper, I’d never seen that before and I thought, "Okay, the paper won’t shake louder than my voice!" It was so terrifying, and it was for years. But I just loved it and I loved that it felt like a movement – spoken word to me is very much a social justice movement. You don’t go to a poetry slam without hearing poems that were written in the hopes of creating some change.

H: Can you tell me more about that idea of spoken word poetry being political?

AG: Putting your own story into the world is a radical act. The experience of sitting in a room and being a quiet witness to other people’s stories is something that can change the world, and so the whole nature of the poetry slam is political even if the poem is about pudding. Someone actually beat me in a poetry slam once with a love poem for pudding, and in my mind that’s political because it’s beauty and sadly beauty has become a political thing.

H: If you could give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?

AG: I’d actually like to hear what advice my 17-year-old self would have to give to me. My younger self knows so much that I stopped listening to over time. You have so much wisdom then, like living in the moment and going out in search of fun. I hate the idea of ever growing out of the desire for fun.

But as far as giving that kid advice, I would tell me to be tender with myself, to talk to myself kindly. I wish I had been putting as much energy into my relationship with myself as with anybody else in my life.

Also, I think I would go back and tell myself to find one person who feels safe to reveal myself to, to be honest with, because I think telling that story to one person can give you a sense of feeling like you have a place in the world and you are held and you are not alone.

I realize that isn’t going to be the case for everybody and sadly the world is such that maybe there are people who won’t have one person they can safely come out to, but in my case I did and I would have recommended that to myself earlier on so I could have the experience of being loved for the whole of me.

H: What advice might you have for younger artists who want to follow in your footsteps?

AG: Make beautiful things and keep making beautiful things and make them when you’re not in the mood to make beautiful things. Write what you’re afraid to write and expose yourself to as much art as you can all the time and stay open while you’re walking through the world. Don’t put other people’s standards of success on how you’re defining your life. Be interested in other people’s writing lives and ask a lot of questions about how they’re doing it. Be ready and excited for tons of rejection. Have humor about it, I swear humor is a lifesaver for every artist. Make a challenge of rejection letters. Have a rejection party. Being an artist is the process of creating, not what comes from it at the end.

You can find more of Andrea Gibson's work — including their new book, Take Me With You, at their website. Or you can buy a copy for $13.50 below...

Penguin

BUY IT HERE



Listen to Hey Galaxy below.

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Follow Here on Facebook and Instagram.



This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io