Poems from a Blue Tin Box

When Tommy asked me to write the foreword to Poems from a Blue Tin Box, I readily agreed as a father would. My mind envisioned the blue box that held something from a South Carolinian antique store kept by Tommy's grandmother and captured by him as a keepsake - as boys do. Now, after a boyhood of trials but ever present love from family, friends, and colleagues, after a journey through southern schools, after essays, theses, and beginning dissertations, after memorizing many scripts and delivering faultless lines and songs as a scholarship student at The American Musical and Dramatics Academy; after seeing the world and running home to Bermuda, his constant sanctuary for rest and peace, comes a new explosion of autobiographical poems from my son. I do believe that everything arising from our individual and collective spirit whether expressed in poetry, prose, action, or lyric, occurring after today, is mixed with the inescapable revival of liberation and hope pulsing through our nations. Tommy Harrell's first anthology of autobiographical poems rises to this test and reflects a modern poet's search for answers to a myriad of questions about one's journey. They are a true summoning of his memories, dreams, reflections and emotions. In Red Silk, his targeted audience through the filter of You Tube, Facebook, and the general web, will readily relate the questions of their city life experience. They will also recognize the lyrical quality of this old fashion love letter wrapped in this poem. The Bell can share the pages of hymns, ancient and modern, and fill us with hope. We can now, as I do, celebrate the mind spring of poetic ambition that welled forth from within him while going through his journey of life. He gives the world a piece of him. He finally shares his hand-written poems from his blue tin box. I remember now as I write this foreword, a poem written to me circa 1989. It is proudly framed on the wall in the Somerset house. It reads in part, "avoid the quiet child who tries to speak to you." I am confident he wrote those words because he was not ready to share his work and feelings yet.