As if it were a jump shot from their basketball-obsessed childhood, “soaring towards the rim like a kite,” Andrea Gibson could send a spoken word poem spinning through space and time knowing it would reach its perfect home — swishing to a close in the last lines, nothing but net.

A master of spoken-word performance, Gibson insisted that poetry, especially when read aloud to an audience, was a political act.

Andrea Gibson, a celebrated poet and performance artist, has died at age 49. Their wife, Megan Falley, announced the news on Monday.