Swarm

admin — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:01:00 +0000

If you love poetry—scratch that—if you love powerfully articulate, passionate prose meant to stir up your inner emotions and inspire you to stand up and create change, then you’ll love the brilliance that queer poet/activist Andrea Gibson serves up aplenty in Swarm.

Primarily recorded in a bedroom, Swarm also contains a handful of live tracks that allow the listener to taste the raw energy of her live performance.

The self-released album came out in 2004, yet the poignant words, occasionally accompanied by a backdrop of acoustic guitar, cut into you like knives and remain just as relevant today—particularly today. Gibson takes it all on—patriarchy, ignorance (the angry, powerful “Wal-Mart”), gender norms (the comedic “Sidewalk Chalk”)—without a bat of the eye, and takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions in just one piece.

Check it out, if not just for the jaw-dropping live track, “Dive,” a brutally honest peek at life and what Gibson pens “the most honest poem I’ve ever spoken in my life.” She speaks passionately of the horrors of life—the stuff that doesn’t make sense, “doesn’t rhyme”—from patriarchy and hate to anti-gay violence. Another gem is “Blue Blanket,” a fierce portrait of patriarchy: “I am generations of daughters, sisters, mother/our bodies battlefields/war grounds/beneath the weapons of your brother’s hands.”

This album will not disappoint. It will change your life.

Written by: Amy Wooten, June 23rd 2007

Andrea Gibson

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 23:16:00 +0000

By Andrea Gibson

Faux Pas Productions

Activist poet Andrea Gibson rations politics into five easy to swallow pills. Her self-titled five track DVD tackles the touchiest issues for queer activists today. From same sex union in “I do,” to rape in “Blue Blanket” and the hypocrisy of the yellow ribbon in her best performance of “For Eli,” Gibson is definitely on top of all the topics. But if watching this film didn’t release my anger towards the patriarchy – or even let me join in her chimed “I do” – it’s only because her writing feels redundant.

The personal is political, but the political does not come to feel personal with Gibson. Too often moments in her writing are outshined by gay pop culture allusions that bring to mind Ani Difranco songs or popular films from a few years back. In the piece “ I do,” she elaborates on a fifty year lesbian relationship that could, at the final hour, be unrecognized by the hospital; though the performance is not lacking, the allusion is quite strong and only reaffirms the tremendous influence gay culture has had on the way we choose to view these personal issues.

At her best in “Dive,” Gibson’s witty beginning plays on the double meaning of saying I love you: "I often repeat myself and the second time's a lie/I love you I love you/see what I mean/I don't ...and I do." But the poem loses this playfulness as she takes the irony of the statement with metaphors that go beyond the difference of subtlety between poetry and spoken word. "see life/doesn't rhyme/it’s bullets/and wind chimes."

Gibson’s wittiness and charisma on stage are her best assets, but her often obsolete approach to the topic is just cutting it short to “another angry dyke” at the mic.

Written by: Beatrice Smigasiewicz, May 29th 2007