For Jen by Andrea Gibson Tita, Stacy, Lauren, and Laressa

.:Introduction:. Andrea Gibson is a 37 year old award winning poet and activist. She is from Calais, Maine but now lives in Colorado. She is the daughter of Mark and Shirley Gibson, and has one sister, Laura. She attended Saint Joseph's College of Maine. In 1999 she went to her first open-mic in Devour. Her successful poetry career includes 4 th place at the 2004 National Poetry Slam and 3 rd at both the 2006 and 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam. The highlight of her career would have to be becoming the first ever poet to win the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Detroit! Her involvement with activist groups includes Take Back the Night Events, Pride events, Anti-war rallies, Peace rallies to name a few. She also works with a group called Vox Feminista whose model is to "comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable" on all these issues.

Description This poem, ‘For Jen’ by Andrea Gibson is about expressing and exploring who you really are through the freedom of expression. Its about finding the balance between good and bad – embracing the good and accepting and learning from the bad; that even though we go through hard times, they don’t last forever!

Main Messages The main message in ‘For Jen’ is that life is not perfect and it is something that is constantly changing. There are some difficult times in life however; people must have hope and courage to seek out safety and comfort despite life’s obstacles so that they can keep moving forward. Andrea talks about how life is precious as we learn from the mistakes we make and that it is important to find a balance in life.

“At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke, I’d watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halo, but I could never make dying beautiful” Andrea uses the simile “I’d watch the nicotine rising from her (Jen) lips like halos,” to compare life and death. She uses halos as a reference to life whereas the nicotine is the reference to death. Halo is something angelic and beautiful. On the other hand, smoking is a negative action which damages our bodies and speeds up our path to death. Andrea conveys that meaning that she can’t make anything as harmful as smoking look beautiful, as Jen could, and she is in awe of her.

“there is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela’s jail cell stretching apart” This metaphor means that the boy is writing his feelings; his opinions. This gives him the freedom of speech, the freedom to say what he wants. He is showing that there is a great freedom in writing, that writing creates a life where you have freedom of expression. He is using his writing to show the power behind his writing to let people see he is trying to set himself free, just like Nelson Mandela would do if he could stretch the bars of his jail cell.

“I know our wounds are deep as Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning…” This last stanza of the poem contains metaphor, comparing to ocean to life. Andrea uses a simile by comparing our wounds to the Atlantic Ocean which shows how deep our wounds can be. Nevertheless, she believes that things will get better despite the challenges we face “But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning.” Andrea uses metaphor to show that the balance of life is something that is constantly changing and unpredictable, just like how the tide is always returning.

“…to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place on fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the centre of our hearts to find its way home.” We have the power to create positive changes by hoping that things will get better “to wake our songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones,” The music symbolises hope, creation and expression whereas the songbirds indicates that there’s life in our actions which can influence others positively. Andrea continues to say that there is no harm in taking chances and sometimes people must have courage to take risks “to place on fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the centre of our hearts to find its way home”. Andrea encourages us to take risks and chances because by doing that we can fully embrace life as we can learn from challenges and obstacles that lay in our path, and keeping moving forward.