BIO
MARC THOMAS
Marc Thomas lives with his wife, Margo, in an artfully painted house on Savannah's south side. He collects books (and reads many of them).
Books and words are central to Marc's life. He has been a librarian, a historical society archivist, and a federal employee constantly involved in the group production of a variety of written works — and anyone who thinks that government correspondence, contracts, budgets, data and economic analyses, meeting reports, regulations, procedure manuals, white papers, congressional testimony, contingency plans, and risk assessments are the graveyard of creativity and originality just has not been paying attention. It is just that the brilliance is cloaked in the shadowy obfuscation of the technical and acrronym heavy governmentese that is essential for clearance.
During the COVID lock down, he rediscovered the box of poems that had been accumulating since early in his life, and compiled his first book of poetry, Surviving Fragments, which was published in early 2024.
Marc's second book of poetry, Talking to the Machines and Other Poems, was published in October 2024. This book of new poems deals with artificial intelligence, COVID, language, identity, epiphanies from the natural world, and reading James Joyce.
In January 2025, Marc established his own independent author imprint RUMINATING POET PRESS (RPP). He has a lot of ideas, and is too old to deal with the delays of traditional publishing. RPP has several projects in the works.
Marc revised a section of poems on long COVID from TTTM to create a one act verse play, Listening to the Survivors: Ghost Stories from the Recent Plague, which was published in early 2025 as the first release from RPP. He is working to arrange to have the play performed locally.
His fourth book of poetry, Wetlands: Low Country Haiku, is scheduled for release in July 2025. He is also working on a chapbook of politically engaged poetry titled Poems of Resistance, also scheduled for Summer 2025 release.
Currently, Marc is active in four book clubs, coordinating two of them, regularly takes courses at The Learning Center in Savannah, and co-leads The Learning Center's Reading Forum, which is a long term long form group reading experience that takes on those classics that you have been meaning to read, but did not get to yet (and the occasional new book).
Marc believes that poetry should be heard as well as seen, and is a regular at poetry open mics in Savannah. See the events page for a listing.
After Marc's first book of poetry, Surviving Fragments, was published, he originally planned to continue recovering old poems and produce a second volume (tentatively titled Recovered Fragments), but the tasks to clean and sort and patch and mend have proved more difficult than to pen new poems. He is still working to recover what is recoverable.