Poetry

Singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel’s songs have been featured in film, in television and on albums by dozens of major artists. Touring and teaching widely, he enjoys the depth and humor the spoken word lends to his concerts and performances. The Sweetest & the Meanest, his first collection of poems, draws on his colorful life experience coming of age in the Deep South, traveling the world and exploring spiritual practices. Born in Memphis, he grew up in Alabama and now divides his time between Memphis and Nashville. 

 

The Sweetest & The Meanest is available in soft cover and e-book formats. Selections have been published in a number of journals and magazines, and he has been a featured author at literary festivals and book events.

Tom does with poems what Eudora Welty did with short stories . . . sweet (but unsentimental), understated little slices of actual human life as experienced here in the south, or anywhere, for that matter. He puts you so close to those beauty/truth/goodness moments of the heart (the ones we’ve all known but defy description), that you’re suddenly in them before you realize it. Like Eudora, he speaks softly, sneaks up on you — and then nails you. Wonderful stuff.” - Pierce Pettis

PUBLICATIONS FEATURING TOM'S POEMS

  • Blue Rock Review 
  • California Quarterly 
  • The Distillery 
  • Oxford So & So 
  • Reflections (Yale University Divinity School) 
  • Sanskrit Literary Arts Magazine (St. John’s University) 
  • Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts 
  • Slant 
  • Wisconsin Review

FESTIVAL/LITERARY EVENT APPEARANCES

  • Alabama Book Festival (Montgomery, AL) 
  • Southern Festival of Books (Nashville, TN) 
  • South Carolina Book Festival (Columbia, SC) 
  • Decatur Book Festival (Atlanta, GA) 
  • Sandhills Writers Conference (Augusta, GA) 
  • Calhoun Community College Writers Conference (Decatur, AL) 
  • Southern Writers Reading (Fairhope, AL)
Tom Kimmel is a treasure. Songman, rocker, poet, seeker, troubadour… always scratching away for the greater truths like a miner for gold. In these poems, you will recognize and celebrate your own humanity — warts and all — and know it’s okay to be a human being. Yeah!” - Marshall Chapman