Since arriving in late 2022, Mark Anthony Thomas has quickly made his mark on Baltimore.

As president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the region’s economic and civic development organization, Thomas helped the city earn its federal designation as a tech hub. The moment took him to Washington, where Thomas introduced President Joe Biden and spoke about Baltimore’s potential.

Before the C-suite, though, the 46-year-old Atlanta native was a young poet, figuring out his place in a world that didn’t always feel welcoming. A quarter-century later, Thomas is revisiting his first love with “In Need of Seawater,” a stylized short film based on poems written by Thomas from the ages of 21 to 24.

The project, shot locally in April and directed by Richard Yeagley, will premiere at 5 p.m. Saturday at the SNF Parkway Theatre. It’s the first installment in a trilogy inspired by Thomas’ poetry, he said.

Why now? “I think something happened when I turned 45. I’m like, ‘I’m in a midlife moment. God, I’m ready to do something,’” the Fells Point resident said.

A return to his writing roots forced Thomas to revisit early struggles. The poem “Ocean Tides,” which opens the movie, came at a time when Thomas was wrestling with his identity and sexuality as he dated a woman. (He came out as gay at 32.) It partially reads:

“Her moods―

real bad moods

pull All of Earth

under distress― yet

she introduces me

as being from

Mars when

I grow from Earth―

too.”

Thomas spoke to The Banner this week about leaning into his creative side, the power of poetry and more. His poems are accessible free on his website. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Where did your love of writing and poetry begin?

I started writing when I was 14. And I will say this, I feel Atlanta had great infrastructure to support the arts. So I was exposed to theater and film, all the stuff that would entice a child’s interest. But I saw Maya Angelou speak when I was a kid, and it was just something about her writing that was really inspiring.

But it wasn’t until I started writing myself and I felt there was validation from people that I had a talent or a gift.

Why has poetry resonated with you most? What does it allow that other forms of expression don’t?

Well, you say more with less, and you allow for people who have these sensitive emotions to be heard. … [Writing] became something I was deeply passionate about, but primarily in writing about others’ issues. With the film … I wanted to [depict] the time where I looked at my own life and my own challenges and my own path and delved into that. And it was a therapeutic process.

These poems find you wrestling with your identity. What were you struggling with?

My sexuality. And this is really front-loaded in the first part of the film. Young Black men in particular — and this is the early 2000s, right? — there’s so much weight of society that is kind of dropped on you. … But in some way TV, news, society — all of the ills in America at that time felt like it was on the weight of young Black men. And so to lift all of that weight off, to just find peace, felt like a journey in itself. You combine that with the uncertainty around my own sexuality and you have just a lot that I needed to explore.

How long has “In Need of Seawater” been in the works?

About a year. Scott Burkholder [principal agent of the Burkholder Agency in Baltimore] and I became really good friends after meeting at a BmoreArt event. He was like, “I want to make sure people see this side of you.” … But the only caveat was I wanted to capture it and make it more reflective, to where I’m looking back 20 years. You see other artists doing that — Erykah Badu just did a tour for [her album] “Mama’s Gun.” So I was thinking, I had something at that age that was, I think, very important, but you don’t see as much of today. You don’t really have a lot of Black men in their 20s writing about identity and finding their voice.

You’ve said you were initially hesitant about doing the movie. Why?

Well, I didn’t want it to overshadow the work that I do at the GBC, and I wanted the timing to be where it was complementary. And so I had this big moment [in 2023] where the White House tapped me to introduce President Biden. So I have these things that have come that I don’t think people understood — why is he being selected for these things? Because GBC is important but not that important. So in some way I want to add color now to, like, this is why people around the country were tapping me to do these other things.

Do you wish you could devote all of your time to art? Is that the goal, or are you OK with the duality of your careers?

I actually love the duality. If anything, so much of my survival had become poetry and writing that I was inspired to do something different. But I’ve come to terms now that this is a part of my life that I need to continue to explore. But I have a dream job, with the work that I’m doing here and all the progress we’re making.

What do you hope viewers take away from the film?

I want — especially for Baltimore, because there’s such a thing of not being from here — [others to know] that people come to Baltimore with their own stories. … This is 100% a film where an Atlanta guy made his story a Baltimore story. And I had a pretty crystallized Atlanta story, right? I want people to see that there is a journey that we all can make in integrating into another city and immersing themselves in the collisions that come with that. Then, on a personal level, [I hope] people have a better sense of my own journey.

For those more familiar with your day job, what are your main focuses for GBC in 2026?

We have a huge branding effort to amplify all of our progress. We need to do more to tell our story to people who want to be investing here and expanding businesses here. We’re working on, I would say, things that require collective action: vacants, public safety, transportation — so big themes.