In this month’s newsletter: We remember Colorado Poet Laureate and Boulder library patron Andrea Gibson; We thank our donors for a successful Summer of Support campaign; We promote the upcoming Boulder Library Gala; We announce two new board members and a new foundation staff member; We preview an upcoming author talk we’re sponsoring with David Baron; We catch you up on all the library news you may have missed
See below for a message from our Executive Director and view the full July newsletter here!
Dear Library Enthusiast,
Like many of you, I have been following with interest and sadness the news coverage of the death – and tributes to the life – of Andrea Gibson, Colorado’s Poet Laureate.
Gibson died last week after living with ovarian cancer for four years. They were 49.
A renowned slam poet and strong voice for LGBTQ issues, Gibson went by they/them pronouns. They sought to reframe so many mainstream thought processes, including what it meant to live with a terminal illness.
In “Love Letter from the Afterlife,” a poem they wrote for their wife, Megan Falley, Gibson wrote, “Dying is the opposite of leaving. 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.”
In death, their reading of that poem to Falley has gone viral. Consumer demand for their seven poem anthologies is stronger than ever. And a documentary about Gibson and Falley, “Come See Me in the Good Light,” which won the Festival Favorite Award at the Sundance Festival, will stream on Apple TV+ this fall.
Less known is that Gibson got their start as a poet writing in a little nook inside the Boulder Main Library. They shared this story with us in a message they recorded for our annual fundraising gala two years ago:
Hi everyone. My name is Andrea Gibson and I am the Poet Laureate of Colorado and I am so thrilled to welcome you to this event.
Libraries mean so so much to me. I remember when I was a little kid going to the library with my mom for the very first time. I got my library card and I felt like I – I felt like I’d received a passport to the universe. It was so exciting.
Libraries connect us to our planet, to our world, they connect us to each other, they connect us to ourselves, to knowledge, and to wisdom, and compassion.
I have a special place in my heart for the Boulder Library. For many years, every single book I read came from the Boulder Library. And when I was first trying to become a full-time poet, I couldn’t afford a computer – which is the case, when you’re trying to become a full-time poet. And every email I sent for years, I’d bike to the Boulder Library, then biked home. Commonly I would bike to the library four times a day. Got a lot of exercise those years.
So thank you Boulder Library, for all you’ve done, for me, and for our community.
Andrea went on to recite “Say Yes,” an uplifting poem they wrote at the Boulder Public Library in 2004, shortly after they had become a full-time professional poet. It begins with these lines:
When two violins are placed in a room, if a chord on one violin is struck, the other violin will sound that same note.
In their newsletter in 2021, Gibson called this and other examples cited in their poem “proof that we are far more connected and far more powerful than we know. We have so much influence on the people around us, and tapping into that, I believe, is the key to changing our communities for the better.”
With astonishment and wonder for a life, as Andrea put it, that we shouldn’t measure in length, but in width.
Chris Barge
Executive Director
