Every week at an open mic night at the Whammy Bar in Calais, Geof Hewitt reads some of his poetry, backed by a group of improvising musicians. And while he doesn鈥檛 write his poems with performance in mind, he says the music 鈥渙ften drives the poem in unexpected ways."
Hewitt is the author of several books of poetry and a retired teacher and language arts consultant for the Vermont Agency of Education. He鈥檚 also Vermont鈥檚 reigning slam poetry champion, a title he鈥檚 held since 2003. You鈥檒l find out why in his interview with Vermont Edition, which is part of a weekly series marking National Poetry Month. The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Geof Hewitt: Well, I have family in Vermont, and so when I got old enough to make a choice as to where I wanted to live, I came to Vermont to live because I like the rural aspect.
Mikaela Lefrak: What were some of the lessons that you learned from those early years in Vermont, maybe about having more of a connection to the land, or hard skills?
Geof Hewitt: Well, I had to learn it all. And, you know, I never learned anything perfectly for sure. I mean, I can tell you stories 鈥� like I built an outhouse and I went to put a door on it, and the damned hinges, I'd put them in backwards or upside down or whatever, so the door was completely unwilling to open. You know, just a dodo using a chainsaw. You know, it scares me to think of how cavalier I wa
Mikaela Lefrak: When you moved to Vermont and then started getting this connection to working with your hands and being closer to the land and nature, were you writing back then? Was this making its way into your poetry?
Geof Hewitt: The answer is yes, it's all a piece. I write from imagination, but my experience is there too. And so you know, most of what I've just told you is in my poems. There's a lot of humor and learning, and mistakes are what make a story.
Mikaela Lefrak: When did you start writing poetry?
Geof Hewitt: When I was 17. [Hewitt here recites lines from a poem.] The teacher gave me a C-minus on that poem. He said I was out-Shellying Shelly. My poems now, I hope, have no resemblance to that, you know, slavish meter and rhyme. I don't know whether what I write is poetry. I call them poems.
Mikaela Lefrak: What else could it be?
Geof Hewitt: Well, it can be chopped up prose. It looks like a poem. Who's to say?
Mikaela Lefrak: I do have a question from listening to your interview with my colleague, Erica Heilman, who's the creator of the podcast Rumble Strip. When she interviewed you, you told her, 鈥淚'm not crazy about poetry. I like what I write, but I'm just as scared of it as anyone else.鈥� What did you mean by that fear? Are you still scared of poetry?
Geof Hewitt: No, no, I that's beside the point. No, no, I'm not scared of it. I don't read a lot of it. I'm close to a literate really. I mean, I have beautiful training, but I don't know [bleep]. Excuse me. I don't know much about literature in general. I'm angry with myself for my lack of knowledge.
Mikaela Lefrak: You seem so knowledgeable about so many different things to me.
Geof Hewitt: I've given what leisure time I had to yakking on the page. That's it. You know, I wasn鈥檛 especially 鈥� I like my friends鈥� work, people that I know and can immediately relate to the voice of the poem. I鈥檝e got eight or 10 very dear friends whose work I really admire.
Mikaela Lefrak: Where and when do you like to write?
Geof Hewitt: Yeah, I like to write in the morning, but also late at night. You know, when things are quiet and I've had either fresh thoughts in the morning or old thoughts in the afternoon. I鈥檓 mostly retired, so anytime I can pick up a pen, I will.
Mikaela Lefrak: And you're known for being Vermont's reigning slam poetry champ. For someone who's never heard slam poetry before, how would you introduce it to them or describe it?
Geof Hewitt: It's really just good spoken word. That's really what it is. The word 鈥渟lam鈥� is hype, but it was invented in a bar and the bartenders were told to keep grinding the frozen cocktails, make any noise you have to make in your job, while poets were at the microphone trying to out-sound the immediate environment. So a lot of hip hoppers were really good at that, and it's just good oral presentation of original work.
Mikaela Lefrak: How did you get this title of reigning slam poetry champion?
Geof Hewitt: Well, Mikaela, I have to tell you that in 2003 I won Vermont's poetry slam championship. I won by 1/10th of a point, and that was the final sanctioned Vermont championship slam. So there hasn't been one since, and I am the reigning champion.
Mikaela Lefrak: You haven't had to defend your title since 2003!
Geof Hewitt: Because there hasn't been an officially sanctioned title match. I have to claim that I'm reigning slam champion -- been there for 22 years.
Mikaela Lefrak: The longest title holder.
Geof Hewitt: Yeah, but I can tell you also that what slams I've entered since then, I probably haven鈥檛 won a single one of them.
Mikaela Lefrak: Are there places to see and hear slam poetry in Vermont, or do you need to travel to another place?
Geof Hewitt: I'm sure it's going on, but I have to tell you that it has waned enormously since COVID. And this is April, this is Poetry Month. And whereas a couple of years ago, I had four or five gigs, I don't have a single one.
Mikaela Lefrak: Geof, I know you've taught poetry for many years. Why do you teach?
Geof Hewitt: Because I love it. I love to teach. And mostly my workshops, we鈥檙e all writing at the same time. I offer a prompt and ask everybody to race as fast as they can. I run it as a race. Who can write the most in seven minutes time?
Mikaela Lefrak: Why do you do that?
Geof Hewitt: Because otherwise, people spend most of the time with the pencil in their mouth thinking. And quick writing 鈥� I call it quick writing, others call it stream of consciousness, whatever 鈥� it鈥檚 a way to generate surprise. And I explained it briefly to the students that you don't have to stick to the subject. You want to surprise yourself. You're going to write so fast, you're not going to be able to keep up with what you're trying to say. That's fine, because we're going to spend time revising it.
And they kind of dig that. And I dig it because I get my writing done. If the teacher wants it, then there's a good, healthy focus on spoken word, you know, taking it and articulating it in a way that the audience can really hear.
Mikaela Lefrak: Okay, I have a question for you about reading poetry out loud. I've been to a lot of poetry readings, and I've noticed that there's this poetry voice or inflection that a lot of poets adopt when they start reading. It鈥檚 a little similar, I guess, to the NPR voice that I'm sure many of us adopt when we have a microphone in front of us. But I wonder what you think of that. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Geof Hewitt: Oh absolutely. I wish I could imitate it, you know, and I think I'm proud to say that I don't use that very often.
Mikaela Lefrak: What role does poetry play in your life right now, either writing it or reading it. What feels unique about your relationship to poetry in this stage of your life?
Geof Hewitt: I guess that I'm, every once in a while, surprising myself by doing something on the page that I haven't ever thought of doing before. Most of it is not good. Most of it's not good. I know that, but I wouldn't get the good stuff if I didn't allow myself, you know, 97% junk. It鈥檚 a matter of weeding through the junk and finding what you can pull out and fashion into a poem, and I love doing it.
Revision gets a bad name, because it's where it's at. As long as you take a free vision of what you're going to do in seven minutes with your pen, and if that becomes a daily habit. I used to work for the Department of Education, and I wanted to lobby for every school having a seven minute quick write at the start of school. And if I were to lobby for something now, it would be seven minutes of singing 鈥� something that raises the spirit, and it becomes habitual.
Mikaela Lefrak: Do you write or sing every day?
Geof Hewitt: No, no. Well, I probably do sing every day. I probably do in the car. If I'm alone in the car, you're glad I'm alone.
Broadcast live on Thursday, April 17, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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