R.I.P. Andrea Gibson, poet and subject of Sundance documentary Come See Me In The Good Light

Gibson was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in 2021. They’ve written candidly about life and death in the years since, especially during their two-year tenure as Colorado’s poet laureate, which began in 2023. “Dying is the opposite of leaving,” they wrote in a poem titled “Love Letter From The Afterlife” shortly before they died. “When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before.”

Their life with the disease also served as the subject of the recent Ryan White-directed documentary Come See Me In The Good Light, which won the Festival Favorite Award when it premiered at Sundance this year. The film contains an original song written by Gibson, Sara Barailles, and Brandi Carlile, and “left much of the audience in tears” when it screened in January, per AP. In a speech at the screening, Gibson shared that they didn’t think they’d live long enough to see it. The documentary is scheduled to premiere this fall on Apple TV+.

Gibson was born in Maine and moved to Colorado in the 1990s. They’ve toured the world performing spoken word poetry and released seven books over the course of their career, including Lord of the Butterflies (2018), How Poetry Can Change Your Heart (2019), and their last, You Better Be Lightning (2021). “Though Andrea desperately wished to have lived a longer life, they could not have lived a fuller one,” Falley wrote. “Over the last four years, they danced with their diagnosis, and continually aimed their internal compass toward joy. One of the last things Andrea said on this plane was, ‘I fucking loved my life.'”

“Andrea would want you to know that they got their wish,” Falley’s tribute concluded. “In the end, their heart was covered in stretch marks.”