Set primarily during an intimate gathering in a Baltimore apartment, the film places the viewer directly inside a private moment of transmission. Friends and collaborators sit close, listening attentively as Thomas reads from The Poetic Repercussion, a collection shaped by his coming of age as a young Black gay man in Atlanta. The warmth of the room is palpable: glances exchanged, quiet smiles, moments of recognition passing silently between listeners. We are not positioned as distant spectators, but as invited guests.
What makes In Need of Seawater particularly compelling is the contrast it creates between past and present. Hearing these poems spoken by Thomas today—older, grounded, reflective—adds a new layer of meaning to words born from urgency, confusion, and discovery. The temporal distance does not dull their power; instead, it sharpens it. The poems feel less like artifacts of youth and more like coordinates on a life map, guiding the artist forward.
Yeagley’s direction wisely avoids over-explaining the work. Instead, he allows the poems to breathe while enriching them through carefully constructed visual interludes: archival footage, home movies, staged sequences, and recurring images of the sea, neighborhoods, and memory-spaces. These moments function like cinematic flashbacks—emotional rather than literal—expanding the poetry into something broader and more documentary in nature. The result is what feels like a “visual poem,” where words and images exist in genuine harmony.
The casting of Ziaire Mann as a younger reflection of Thomas is especially effective. His presence creates a quiet dialogue between generations—between the man who wrote the poems and the man who now carries them. This interplay reinforces one of the film’s central ideas: that creative expression is not frozen in time, but constantly reshaped by experience, mentorship, and legacy.
The film also operates on a larger social level. While deeply personal, Thomas’s poetry consistently opens outward, addressing race, politics, love, spirituality, and the Black American experience across decades. In this sense, In Need of Seawater becomes a subtle portrait of America itself—seen through the eyes of a young Black man navigating identity, inequality, and hope. The personal becomes political without ever feeling didactic.
Technically, the film is understated but assured. The editing flows naturally between readings and visual sequences, and the soundtrack moves gently beneath the images, binding past and present into a single rhythm. There is a sense of musicality not only in the poems themselves, but in the structure of the film as a whole. Nothing feels rushed; the pacing invites reflection.
As the first installment of a planned trilogy, In Need of Seawater feels complete while also leaving space for what comes next. It is less concerned with analysis than with presence—with allowing us to sit with the words, the man, and the moment. Rather than nostalgia, the film offers continuity: an understanding that early creative impulses do not disappear, but quietly shape everything that follows.
Ultimately, In Need of Seawater is a film about survival through language. About how poetry can anchor a life, create community, and bridge generations. It is intimate without being insular, poetic without being pretentious, and deeply human in its approach. For viewers open to listening—to words, to silence, to memory—it is a quietly powerful experience that lingers long after the final reading ends.
Theater release: https://parkway.eventive.org/schedule/in-need-of-seawater-693af0474710d30a2f33a3a3
