Tom Poland

Tom Poland
A Southern writer, Tom Poland’s work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. He’s published five books and more than 500 magazine features. In 1996, Reckon magazine published his literary feature, "Deliver Me from Leviathan," on James Dickey. Excerpts were published in The World As A Lie–James Dickey, the Dickey biography by Henry Hart. The University of South Carolina Press has published three of his books, most recently, Reflections of South Carolina, now in its third printing. For six years, Tom worked as a scriptwriter and cinematographer, working primarily along the South Carolina Lowcountry and its barrier islands. While filming on a primitive barrier island one evening, fog rolled in trapping him overnight. That experience led to his novel, Forbidden Island, and the mythical Georgialina. Currently, he’s working on two nonfiction books. A Lincolnton, Georgia, native and University of Georgia graduate, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Read more at www.tompoland.net Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity: Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews
Number of posts: 44
Email address: tompol@earthlink.net

Posts by Tom Poland:


    Life, People & Places, Talk, Voices

    The Not-So-Wily Whitetail Deer

    by Tom Poland | 4, Add your Comment | Aug 14 10
    The Not-So-Wily Whitetail Deer
    The August 5 edition of my hometown newspaper, the Lincoln Journal, mentioned that primitive weapon deer hunts are to be held this fall at Bussey Pointe in Lincoln County. The report brought back the days when my Granddad Poland often referred to the Bussey Place down in Double Branches, and it resurrected one day in particular, my one day as a deer hunter back in 1979. Back then I worked as a scriptwriter for what’s known today as the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. I’d write scripts on natural history topics and occasionally on hunting and fishing. The boss of ...
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    Life, Talk, Voices

    Heroes Of The Soil

    by Tom Poland | 10, Add your Comment | Aug 9 10
    Heroes Of The Soil
    My lunches have been simple but delicious all summer. I’ve pretty much lived off tomato sandwiches. I grow my own tomatoes in the back yard. Here in the city we don’t have that much land for planting a garden, so I satisfy my urge to farm in a simple manner: bush tomatoes in one half of an old whiskey barrel. I’m always thinking of other things I’d like to grow. The desire to grow things is one of those instincts hardwired into us. Somewhere along the human highway running from hunter to gatherer, we learned to stay in one place ...
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    Life, Talk

    Now Loading In Track Two

    by Tom Poland | 10, Add your Comment | Aug 8 10
    Now Loading In Track Two
    We love our cars. Just hop in, turn the key, and off we go wherever and whenever we want. Contrast that to mass transit. You go by its schedule and you have little choice as to whom you sit near. It can be, and often is, a less-than-stellar experience. An email came across my desk last week where a writer described the difficult time she had riding a bus from Columbia to Washington D.C. and back, a 27-hour journey. It involved rude people, an oversexed couple, and ultimately an arrest. I could relate to her adventure, having ridden a Greyhound from Columbia ...
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    Life, People & Places, Talk, Voices

    Riding The Chitlin’ Circuit

    by Tom Poland | 3, Add your Comment | Jul 1 10
    The staff at Charlie's Place, early 1950s. Charlie, second from right. (Photo by Jack Thompson)
    A writer is only as good as his material, and now and then something profound falls into his lap. For close to two years now I’ve been working on a book for the University of South Carolina Press. Early chapters of the book concern the blues. A major part of writing is research. It’s akin to mining for gold; you get a lot of dirt but few nuggets. In this case, however, the blues turned up a nugget of gold, black gold. Frank Beacham, a journalist originally from Honea Path, South Carolina, wrote a penetrating chronicle called “Charlie’s Place.” The story originally ...
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    Life, Sights & Sounds, Talk, Voices

    Change You Can Believe: Music & Its Technology

    by Tom Poland | 4, Add your Comment | Jun 30 10
    Change You Can Believe: Music & Its Technology
    A piece of junk mail from Belk came my way last week promoting a Father’s Day sale. On the cover was a tabletop version of the classic Wurlitzer. For $169.99 you can buy one, plug it in, dock your iPod in it, and behold, you have the iJuke. Rock on. This marriage of the latest music technology with the classic Wurlitzer set me to thinking. Music and music technology sure have changed. I was just 15 when music technology impressed me the first time. My cousin showed me his car, a used Mercedes. The fact that it was a Mercedes didn’t ...
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    Life, Talk, Voices

    When We Made Toys

    by Tom Poland | 5, Add your Comment | Jun 28 10
    When We Made Toys
    We Were Green Before Green Was Cool It was like cutting through steel. I had to get out my electric Black & Decker scissors to cut through the hard clear plastic that entrapped brand new remote-controlled helicopters for my grandsons from North Carolina. That plastic is as tough a substance as I’ve come across, a sort of flexible clear steel. As I cut the helicopters free, I thought, “Man, we had nothing like these when I was a boy.” And then I went back to the days when toys encased in hard, clear plastic didn’t exist. I went back to the days ...
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    Life, People & Places, Talk, Voices

    Notes From The Road

    by Tom Poland | 1, Add your Comment | May 2 10
    Notes From The Road
    Writer Tom Poland Gets His Kicks on Highway 76 And the taillights dissolve, in the coming of night … Sensing too well when the journey is done. There is no turning back … – Robert Plant (This feature appears in the spring 2010 issue of Sandlapper, the magazine of South Carolina.) In a way, the journey was done for many fine two-lane highways June 29, 1956. That’s the day President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, the Interstate Act. Eisenhower, a general to the end, envisioned highways, his “broad ribbons,” laden with tanks and troops, and South Carolina got its share. Fifty-three years, five interstates, ...
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    Life, People & Places, Talk, Voices

    A High-Octane Education

    by Tom Poland | 5, Add your Comment | Mar 31 10
    A High-Octane Education
    Jordan Anderson’s Innovative Reading, Writing and Racing Author’s Note: I met Jordan Anderson a little over three years ago. In an era when many young men seem unsure of themselves and wander about with no career or education goals, it’s refreshing to see a young man with clear goals. It’s interesting to note also how NASCAR finds its drivers and future stars today now that the days of dirt lanes and bootleg liquor are long behind us. In case you haven’t caught up with racer/student Jordan Anderson lately, you’ve got some catching up to do. But that’s not likely to happen on ...
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    Life, Talk, Voices

    This Bads For You

    by Tom Poland | 10, Add your Comment | Mar 23 10
    This Bads For You
    Lessons In Reality Now what’s this title about? I know that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe I didn’t set it up right. Maybe it’s a foul play on words. Oh, my bad. “My bad.” How I hate that expression. With origins in a hip street culture that thinks it’s oh so clever, sayings like that get bandied about by people who should know better. Not long ago I heard Meredith Vieira say “my bad” regarding some blunder she made on the “Today Show.” It would have made my old sixth-grade English teacher, Helen Turner, pull out her hair. “My bad.” Want to sound illiterate? ...
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    People & Places, Sights & Sounds, Talk, Views, Voices

    Winter-Spring Romances

    by Tom Poland | 14, Add your Comment | Mar 13 10
    Winter-Spring Romances
    Few things shock the eyes like the quintessential “in-love” couple. I’m talking about an aged, well-heeled gentleman with an extremely young woman on his arm. Extremely young. Their age difference runs into the 50s or more. Thankfully, we run across such a sight just now and then. He, teetering along, proud of his high-heeled possession. She, paying oh so much attention to him. Doting. It all seems, well, it seems fake. So out of place. And preposterous. It’s a sight for sore eyes. But when you run across a flock of these couples, it makes you shake your head. Such ...
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    Life, Talk

    Memories Of Munich

    by Tom Poland | 7, Add your Comment | Feb 27 10
    Memories Of Munich
    For Southerners, it’s been a snowy winter. A few December flakes teased us, just hominy snow, no accumulation, but then a February blanket of white cloaked the land. And many of us watched the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, where it snows most nights. Against that splendid wintry backdrop in a place called Whistler, I saw a Georgian (the far away version) die. Snow and death, what a mix. Coming out of turn 16, Nodar Kumaritashvili flew off the sledding track at nearly 90 mph, striking a metal pole. And so the people of Georgia, that Georgia in the ...
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    Sights & Sounds, Talk

    Kilroy Was Here, A Riveting Tale

    by Tom Poland | 4, Add your Comment | Jan 30 10
    Kilroy Was Here, A Riveting Tale
    1945. The guns fell silent. World War Two had ended. Many GIs and other servicemen returned home and with them came the legend of Kilroy. I was young but I remember hearing my folks and others talk about the ever-present Kilroy. He was here, there, everywhere. A cultural phenomenon, Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who always got there first, no matter where GIs went. I’m sure a lot of the veterans back home remember their good friend, Kilroy. He was everywhere, quite a mover. Symbolizing the spirit of the American fighting man who went anywhere in the world to defend freedom, ...
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    Sights & Sounds, Talk, Views

    Breathing Helium & Smashing Roses

    by Tom Poland | 2, Add your Comment | Jan 27 10
    Breathing Helium & Smashing Roses
    No, the title of this piece has nothing to do with punk rock groups. Quite by accident I stumbled across the Science Channel last night. There it was, a doomsday asteroid in high-definition hurling toward Earth, a catastrophe like no other. Far away in space, this menacing, pockmarked mass of nickel and iron, said the narrator, would end life as we know it someday, that is, if science could not find a way to deflect it. Some of the best minds in science then discussed what might deflect it and what would fail miserably. All this science took me back to ...
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