Tim Carmichael
Bio
Tim is an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. He writes about rural life, family, and the places he grew up around. His poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, his latest book.
Achievements (12)
Stories (283)
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Mary Oliver: How Poverty Forged a Voice That Reshaped Modern Poetry
Mary Oliver entered childhood with little support or comfort. Her home life carried tension that weighed heavily on her, so she sought refuge outdoors whenever she could slip away. Fields, woods, tide pools, birdsong, creeks, shifting weather, all of it offered relief from an atmosphere that felt too tight for a growing spirit. Those early escapes created habits that defined her entire career. She learned to listen, to watch closely, to follow small traces of movement through grass or across water. She learned to trust perception more than conversation. That trust evolved into a poetic voice treasured by millions.
By Tim Carmichael2 months ago in Humans
I Thought We Were Cleaning Out our Uncle’s House, Then We Found This
Uncle Jerry had been dead for three days, and already the house smelled like a mixture of old newspapers, mothballs, and despair. The family had gathered to clean it out, ostensibly to honor him, but mostly to figure out who got the good stuff before someone else did.
By Tim Carmichael2 months ago in Fiction
An Appalachian Winter Ritual
The hog killing always came after the first hard freeze, when the temperatures stayed low enough to keep meat from spoiling and the work could proceed without flies buzzing around the carcass. In the mountains of Western North Carolina, this usually meant late November or early December, though some years we waited until January if the weather stayed warm.
By Tim Carmichael2 months ago in Humans
The Uppermost Chamber. Runner-Up in The Forgotten Room Challenge.
The house on Ashford Lane had belonged to my uncle for thirty-seven years before his death, and in all that time so the servants say he had never once ascended to the uppermost chamber. Not once in all those long decades had he permitted his foot to fall upon the narrow staircase that wound its serpentine way to that sealed door. When I inherited the estate in the autumn of 1847, I thought little of this peculiarity. My uncle had been an eccentric man, prone to strange habits and stranger silences. That he should choose to abandon an entire room of his own house seemed merely another manifestation of his melancholic temperament.
By Tim Carmichael2 months ago in Fiction
