Tyler Gambill is 30 years old and his hometown is Indianola, OK. A town with a population of about 200 located about 1.5 hours south of Tulsa. He currently lives in Tulsa with a roommate, three cats, and two dogs.
In high school, he was a “skater kid,” who got kicked out of Mannford High School for having (and acting) on a deep streak of anti-authority. Starting at 21, and for seven years after, he worked full-time making airplane parts during the day. He took evening classes to get his bachelor’s degree in English Literature from TCC and NSU/BA, graduating with the highest honors. During this time he was also a high-functioning alcoholic.
Today he is a non-practicing alcoholic, which is basically a fun way of saying that he used to drink a lot, found out that he and substances weren’t a good match, and so gave drinking up.
He celebrated four years of sobriety this past October and will also celebrate four years of employment at the Tulsa Boys’ Home in February. His work here is what made him decide to pull the trigger on becoming a therapist and he will graduate with his master’s degree in mental health counseling this May. He is currently an intern therapist at the Center for Therapeutic Intervention and works mostly with men who are on their own journey toward recovery and/or participants in the Tulsa Drug Court Program.
Above all, his mission to help men and teen boys is what keeps him grounded enough to write poetry. Poetry, Wordsworth said, is something like “emotion recollected in tranquility.” His work helping others is what allows him to find the tranquility necessary to recollect and reflect upon the emotions that fuel his poetry. This process, to him, is something akin to alchemy: some sort of magical thing where we turn experiences—even the most painful and, at face value, ugly ones—into something beautiful. Something beautiful straight from our hearts. Something that we can share with others that may just open their hearts up too. In as much as writing and sharing poetry is an act of sharing truth and beauty, writing poetry is also an act of loving, which is really what it’s all about.
He, thus far, has one published poem at NSU and one published short story at TCC. He will be self-publishing his first collection of poems—“Everything is New under the Moon”—very soon.
