Memory Land—The Past

“Tom Poland is an inquisitive man who keeps an eye out for extravagant chunks of nature, disappearing cultures, and people who are salt of the earth. He has ridden those so-called back roads for years chewing foods, sipping drinks, absorbing stories and documenting his finds. Change is what Poland touches upon frequently.” —Wayne Ford of the Athens Banner Herald

Change is my subject matter. I think of myself as a blue-collar writer. I write a weekly column for newspapers and journals in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speak to groups across South Carolina and Georgia.

I roam forgotten back roads and places where the pace slows, where old mansions crumble, and orchards go untended. It’s there that I find inspiration.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” You’ll find it along the back roads.

Tom Poland Bio Shot

“I just mentioned you today in a meeting with several folks involved in various Georgia history projects. Your name came up as one of our best writers today. If this year permits you to submit stories to Georgia Back Roads, you can rest assured that the editor will rejoice. I love your stories.” —Dan Roper, Editor, Georgia Back Roads Magazine

Order Of The Palmetto—The highest civilian honor in the State of South Carolina, it recognizes a person’s lifetime achievements and contributions to the State of South Carolina and her people.

Member of Authors Round the South

SC Humanities Speakers Bureau

SC ETV Advisory Council

Your books and articles transport me and many others to a different time as we recall times with our parents/grandparents when life was much simpler, loving, and appreciated. —R. Steadman

I don’t understand how a writer can get writer’s block, so called. My problem is having too much and not being able to get it all down. —James Dickey

Because I was born in the South, I’m a Southerner. If I had been born in the North, the West, or the Central Plains, I would be just a human being. —Clyde Edgerton

You speak for the Carolina that is sorely neglected–the down-trodden, the forgotten, the ignored, but hard-working, interdependent heart of our state. —Reg Brasington, Columbia, SC

This morning I re-read Tom Poland’s story in the December 2018, issue (Georgia Back Roads) about his grandfather and wanted to shout with joy. Wonderfully written. He’s a writer I’d love to meet. —Terry Kay, Georgia Author of To Dance with the White Dog

I almost cried for what we have lost. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me for you to take me back with you. —Brenda Bancroft, North Augusta, SC

That was about the best program we ever had. Someone compared you to Mark Twain. I had no idea of your gifts of humor.—Tony Scully, president, Kershaw County Historical Society

I just discovered your stories online. I really enjoy your writing. I plan to read them like my Mama read the Bible—a little at a time so that I can savor them. —Bill Hatch of Carolina Moon Distillery, Edgefield SC

Author and “blue-collar historian” Tom Poland documents the disappearing rural and folk traditions of South Carolina and eastern Georgia with a voice somewhere between newspaper columnist and general store front porch raconteur. — Kyle Petersen

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There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self. —Ernest Hemingway

Reader on “Moonshine Memories. ” This was one of the most touching stories I have ever read. It touched me in so many different ways that I lost count. I learned about your writing this year and am looking forward to reading all of it. God bless you for your work and what it means to people. I plan to attend the Southern Studies Showcase and hope to see you there.—Kathy Orr

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real. —James Salter

No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place. ―Babel

The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement—if you can’t deal with this you needn’t apply. —Will Self in The Guardian

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. —Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

I don’t know why I started writing. I don’t know why anybody does it. Maybe they’re bored, or failures at something else. ― Cormac McCarthy

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. —Ernest Hemingway

Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter

To be a writer is to be sentenced to correcting. —James Salter

It’s dangerous not to let things age, and if something is really good, you should put it away for a month. —James Salter

If you’re a singer, you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes. —Mickey Spillane

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. —Ernest Hemingway

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. —Ernest Hemingway

Survival is triumph enough. ―Harry Crews

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

Your “blue-collar writer” image is astounding. Is there any higher compliment that anyone can pay to another than to say that you can “Leap across an existential aloneness?” And, your ability to enter into my southern experiences and draw out of them more than I ever imagined is the highest honor. I treasure each of your writings because you teach me more about myself and my world than I see. My sponge continues to absorb your stories. —Reg Cholton

Recipient of the Order Of The Palmetto—The highest civilian honor in the State of South Carolina. It recognizes a person’s lifetime achievements and contributions to the State of South Carolina and her people.