Interview with Gareth Bryant

Gareth Bryant is a 32 year-old writer based in New York City. A Muslim revert, Gareth converted (reverted) to Islam in high school at the age 15. He’s been a professional writer since 2008 with his online blog, GarethBryant.wordpress.com, generating over 100,000 views so far. Some of his other pursuits include modeling and a non-profit organization for which Gareth is the national spokesperson: Muslims Giving Back.

Would you describe yourself as a poet?
“I used to describe myself as a poet early on because when I first started writing in 2008, I was writing exclusively poetry. But then when I started my writing page in 2011, I started to expand my writing. And I ended up finding out that as a literary artist, as a writer, my craft evolved in such an important way that it was beyond just the scope of poetry, of rhyme and poetics. Referring to my writing and what I write, I now consider myself as a writer. Obviously I am a poet in the conventional sense, but much more than just a poet, I’m a writer.”

Growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, did that at all affect your writing?
“Oh yeah of course…I can fairly say that I’ve written about every life experience that I’ve ever had. That’s very fair to say…You gotta remember, people are in fact products of their environment. Your environment defines who you are as a person to a very great deal. So obviously if I would’ve grown up in a different place, I probably wouldn’t have even been a poet. I probably would’ve been some lame stockbroker…or biggest drug dealer.”

What do you mostly write about these days?
“It’s relevant to the time and place. A fair amount of my writing is religiously, socially, and politically based…a lot of current events. Some stuff about…financial conditions of the world or of the country, and things of that nature.”

A lot of commentary?
“It’s almost exclusively commentary….I would say my poetry, specifically, is more self-commentary, self-reflection, self-evaluation. It’s more commentary of my own life…I always like to personalize myself in my poetry. I always exert a lot of my personal energy into my poetry. And basically if you didn’t know me- if you would’ve just go through my blog page and just view my writings, you would get a perfect sense of who I am as a person, even if you’ve never met me before. In other words, that’s how much I invest of myself into my writing.

….It’s like a digital autobiography. It’s a personal anthology.”

Are there any major themes, or symbols you write about that show up in your writing?
“My two main influences referring to my writing are in fact religion and social historical, socio-political aspects. So basically, most of my writing comes exclusively from a religious and socio-historical, socio-political perspective.”

What are some of your influences in your writing?
“I…I can’t really pinpoint, a fellow writer per say. In the beginning I tried to pattern my poetry specifically after Edgar Allen Poe. I like his dark thematic kinda like self-incriminating [writing]. So I actually adopted a lot of that…especially in myself self-reflective writing. A lot of it is self-crimination, self-indictment against myself…[And] I used that type of matrix or format. But then I just developed my own style.”

What would that style be?
“Basically, I just view my life– you have to remember that writing is general– specifically poetry. It’s a very personalized interpretation of things. Even your own religious stances, the world around you, how you view anything and everything. So that’s basically what I do with my writing, more specifically– my poetry, it’s very indicative of how I personally view things.

…I’m my biggest influence. I mean it’s fair to say, from a human perspective, I am my primary reference. Now, obviously, from a divine perspective, Allah holds the highest level referring to influence over my writing. Most of my themes or writing have a very deep rooted religious context. And obviously since I’m Muslim, that means Allah has a very deep influence in my writing.”

Can you give us some examples?
“OK. Let’s give an example of… relationships. I’ve had a lot of sucky relationships. But all relationships are not the same. But when I write poems about relationships, or when I have written poems about relationships, I exclusively wrote it from my perspective relative to my experience, and my moment in time, that as an example. Again, like I said, what I do, exclusively with my poetry, I draw a lot from myself. I use myself as the drawing board. I just extract certain psychological aspects, emotional aspects, things of that nature, and I put it to pen and paper.”

So what, are you up to now a days?
“Actually I just recently published a poetry book, my very first poetry book published. I’m trying to advocate and just get it traction. I’m going to Insha’Allah (if Allah wills) I’m actually gonna be doing a promo video this week for it. To be very honest the publishing element has suffered because I’ve been so highly involved in my nonprofit Muslims Giving Back. So that’s actually taken the back burner in pursuit to my nonprofit and modeling pursuits, ironically. And I’m still working, the regular stuff that New Yorkers go through on a regular basis.”

Any plans for the future?
“Definitely I wanna be at a place where my writing is a lot more well known…I literally have large views from places I didn’t even know were countries. Like, this far off island of the south East coast of Africa, La Réunion, a province of France, I’ve gotten blog views from there. I’ve actually gotten views from this island in south Indian Ocean, Mayotte, which literally means island of death in Arabic. [In] the immediate future, I actually want to start going to the places where my writing has reached.”

Find Gareth Online!
http://garethbryant.wordpress.com/