Come See Me in the Good Light

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Andrea Faye Gibson (August 13, 1975 – July 14, 2025) was the Poet Laureate of Colorado. They were also an activist engine who created verse of pointed declarative arrows of plain speech.

Director Ryan White chronicles Andrea’s life, their writing process, and their health struggle in “Come See Me in the Good Light” produced by comedians Tig Notaro and Kevin Nealon as well as others.

It is a direct and startling documentary for its honesty, both empathetic and stoic by turns.

Andrea Gibson is non-binary. In high school, they were bullied but after a breakup, Gibson had the courage to try a spoken word performance and they were liberated, volcanized with fire and iron.

After struggles with depression and an attempt at suicide and several loves, Megan enters Andrea’s life and they are harmonic. The two beings are coupled and plural: Romeo and Romeo, Juliet and Juliet, multiple and Shakespearean.

In 2021, Andrea feels an “anaconda in the stomach.”

The diagnosis is ovarian cancer. By their own admission, Gibson’s depression lifts and they now have a will for a living peace and more oxygen.

Through it all Gibson stays the course: a searing pencil of light with glasses, just a bit punk. Megan is with them at every step.

This is an affecting and brave documentary. Given the subject matter of art in the face of cancer, one might expect it to be sad, yet it is not. The film is existential in the most positive qualities because it is accepting of life’s twists and turns, the happenstance of magic and the savoring of transient moments. Gibson is open to randomness, change and the infinite masquerade of nature in all of its forms. When they look for a tree, a squirrel or a beleaguered and possibly cursed mailbox, the film twists into something quirky and strange.

One sees Gibson face chemo after chemo with bouts of remission. Cancer is less a devil to her than a poltergeist, alien and unwelcome, a ghost of vacuums robbing Gibson’s oxygen, threatening to steal their voice forever.

Like all esteemed poets, Gibson wrestles with questions of legacy, meaning, the sound of words and the passing of time.

When they face the stage, after a warmup introduction by Tig Nataro, Gibson is a muscular boxer of language, bouncing and triumphant.

One is left with the varied observant joy that is Andrea Gibson, they are antenna of nature, verbal and verdant, existential and alert.

Gibson by their own admission carries a small collection of words for poems, but their forceful, clear voice turns the small valise of words into a searing circus, roaring and honest in pitch.

This film is as fluid and clear as the poet’s verse and as a creative product it makes a fitting light box for the legacy that is Andrea Gibson.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com