TA News

Since 2016, creative writing students at TA have had the unique opportunity to work with Vermont’s reigning poetry slam champion, author, poet, and performer Geof Hewitt. This year, Hewitt joined Mr. Mann’s Creative Writing and Emily Silver’s Composition for College and Career courses as an artist-in-residence.

Over the course of the week with Hewitt, Mann and Silver’s students engaged in a variety of poetic exercises and excursions. They learned about the art and science of poetry and performance. The Poet-in-Residence unit wrapped up with 19 student and faculty poets sharing their work in the MJR Theater in a poetry slam format.

The poets performed their poems for their peers and for the student judges, who ranked their performances on a scale of 1-10. Spectators were encouraged to loudly cheer or boo the judges’ assessments, but the scores remained final. In the end, the slam produced one winner: TA junior Ben Mattern. It was a great capstone to a week of celebrating poetry in the classroom.

The 2022 presenting poets were (in order of presentation): Hannah Williams, Oliver Yukica, Marshall Melancon, Ramona Spelman, Robina Wilmott, Grace Solsaa, Finn Liland, Jasper Jones, Whitney Lewis, Natalie Lewis, Charlize Brown, Toby Critchfield, Mr. Mike Mann, Haleigh Franco, Ben Mattern, Wendell Durham, Isaac Yukica, and Emma Willens. Click here to read some of the student poetry.

TA would like to thank the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation for its generous support of the poet-in-residence program each year.