In Need of Seawater

In Need of Seawater follows writer and filmmaker Mark Anthony Thomas as he returns to the poems that shaped his early creative life. Marked by a twenty-year distance from his book The Poetic Repercussion, the film traces how those words carried him through personal upheaval, artistic discovery, and the evolving cultural landscape of America. Directed by Richard Yeagley, the documentary blends staged performance, intimate readings, and rare archival footage to illuminate the emotional and social world that forged Thomas's voice. What emerges is a portrait of a young artist wrestling with identity, history, and the search for clarity-set against the backdrop of a changing country. As the first installment of a poetic documentary trilogy, In Need of Seawater revisits the past not as nostalgia, but as a map: revealing how language anchored a life, how expression became survival, and how the earliest creative impulses continue to guide the journey forward.

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