Heretic Vicar

Poets & Storytellers Open Interview Date: 2025/07/11 

“Somebody has to speak up, otherwise there’s not going to be a world to inherit. And so I understand that there’s a little bit of hope.”
- Heretic Vicar

(Unfortunately, the recording started a little late and we missed the first few seconds of Heretic’s response to a question about his perspective on the conservative far-right given the context of some of his poems, to which he started by saying something about being brought up in a religious family and now identifying as a “recovering Christian.”) 

Heretic Vicar: –Well, they forced him to get married, like in the little place, you know, because he wasn’t raised in the faith. It just seems like that was not appropriate. And I guess today I was aiming at that a little. But I still followed that growing up, I guess up until the point of Reagan, where I kind of woke up and said, “Wait a minute, you know, this world, this country’s for everybody, and that’s what the Constitution says.” And I switched parties to independent and now Democrat, because I had to take a stand. 

Gregg Yupanki Bautista: So do you feel like politics has always been part of your writing or have you gone back and forth on writing about it? And now with everything happening in the past several years? 

HV: Definitely because of everything happening in the past several years. And I didn’t really write before that, I began writing 3 years ago because I had a broken heart over becoming a widow and deciding after a couple of years, arbitrarily, really, that I could date again.

I didn’t realize that I was setting myself to one person, and just a few dates could mean, “oh, my God, you’re it for me forever.” I was just heartbroken by it. And so I started writing about things in order to keep myself sane, and journaling. And I guess more well-adjusted people can do some of that stuff. (laughs) I was more, you know, “Where’s the next concert?” And one thing led to another.

I went to a friend’s funeral, the manager of a band I worked for, and he was a poet with the New Hope Beats. They were reading his poems over his grave and I said, “you know, I’ve got some of this stuff at home.” I had filled the journal up because I was writing each day about, you know, how my day went. And then, I thought, “well, these words have a ring, this is interesting.” And I just started putting those in the back. And I filled the book up from the back to the front. But now it’s all on the phone. (laughs) 

GYB: Fill in half finished notebooks from back to front… that’s the secret. (laughs) 

HV: Yea. Whatever makes sense, whatever phrase kind of clicks with another one, and then I realized that on some level, the words just come. And I can get into that zone. I don’t know what writers’ block is, I have the opposite of that. I don’t know how to stop it, I don’t know how to shut it up. The best time for me to write is in the morning. And it’s made me late to work before. (laughs) I’m afraid to save it for later because it seems like when I walk into that work environment, that could all shut off. If there is a writer’s block, it’s called the “Big People World,” right? I got to get with my employer about what’s the issue of the day for the construction industry. 

GYB: You mentioned that you started writing by journaling, and by your performance cadence, it sounds very… well, not “very,” I don’t mean to generalize, but it sounds like a stream-of-thought. Is that how you always wrote or did you discover that as you started performing and figuring out your rhythm and everything else? How’d you come to that? 

HV: That’s how I always wrote. That’s where it comes from. I haven’t done any studying other than to sit down with some people that have done a lot of poetry and have literary degrees. They pull it apart in a creative way and say, “Well, this line ought to go here, and that’s a good closer,” and, you know, “What’s this? It doesn’t fit,” that kind of thing.

That’s at Bucks Community College, they have this writers group that meets a couple Saturdays a month. Terrence Culleton does that. 

GYB: There’s a rich history of poets who didn’t formally study the form in an institution and learned that way. I like how, as I said earlier, when you read you have your own way of speaking… your cadence kind of works against what one would call the “formality” of poetry, like structure or meter, things like that. I can really appreciate that. 

And some of the themes that you talk about in poems I’ve heard you perform before, and in some of your poems that I’ve read, subjects like death are unexpectedly superimposed on nature poems that don’t seem to start off as being set up to contain death themes, like “Woodland Elegy Menage.” I like that one because those themes function together and independently from the setting. But can you tell me about how you come to write about things like that? At the start of the interview, you said you write kind of on the dark side–where does that come from for you? 

HV: Well, I’m a wild mushroom forager. I’m in the woods a lot, and I see a lot of woodlands that are very ill, you know? So I just see this world collapsing around me, and it’s not good. So… (long pause) You know, I guess I gotta hold out some hope that things will change. What else can we do? 

GYB: Yeah. I think other than doing our part, it’s also holding the people in power accountable for everything that THEY could be doing. Because if they can tell us, “Recycle,” “Don’t use plastic straws…” well how about they don’t dump poison into the oceans? 

HV: Yeah, they keep propagating these electric cars instead of the stink buggies that we drive around in. I mean, I’m a hypocrite, I get in one and drive home. It makes it possible that we can go from point A to point B. I can be at a reading in Lehigh tomorrow, then go to a farmer’s market that’s nice, healthy local food. Well, I’ve got to drive there, truth be told.

But the other thing that I do see in the woods is this, you know, everything’s looking to eat, and there’s that whole birth and death thing happening as I go through the woods. And I find last year’s antler sheds from the deer or a skeleton. There’s a glass artist I know who makes jewelry with bones, and I help her source materials. And it’s funny that just this last week I was out and was looking for chanterelles and I did find a deer skull and saved it. And then I found another one, and I just… I feed these guys in the wintertime, so there’s a part of me that.. I can’t think about it much, because it hurts. I know what happened to these guys a lot of the time. They get hit by a car, they run in the woods, and they go.

I used to be an avid fisher. I got into the mushroom thing through fishing, and I knew this lady for whom I kept with fish, and she kept me with wild mushrooms, morels and chanterelles. And I can’t do it anymore, the fishing. I just. I don’t know, I don’t want to cause any critters on the planet any more pain. 

GYB: It’s tough finding that balance of responsibly sourcing from the earth versus taking too much. It’s part of a lot of communities too, and I know Wull & Oak can speak better to this than me, but there are a lot of efforts to save the Sourlands in this area. 

HV: Yes! 

GYB: A lot of organizations, a lot of people who do stewardship programs and such. So I think that those need to have a bigger platform, for how we were saying before, doing our part of it. 

HV: And keeping the forest intact, you know? We all need places to live, but I think they’re there if you look for them. It comes back to politics and letting organizations buy properties for rentals, as opposed to people being able to afford a house to buy. It’s crazy out there. You hear nightmare stories from people trying to start a family and get their first house and it doesn’t happen, because these investment groups come in and buy the houses up and will rent it to you for three grand a month. It’s like, “maybe I could have afforded the mortgage at two,” you know? But that’s what’s happening nationally. 

GYB: Yea, we saw a lot of that get worse with the pandemic. Now it’s just out of control. 

So last question for me is the prompt question from the beginning. What is something you wish was “free?” You can take that as the financial kind of free or the liberation kind of free. 

HV: Something I wish was free. The first thing that comes to mind is healthcare. I think that resonates with a lot of people here. There’s no reason why it can’t be. Having been to Europe, a friend of mine spent three weeks in a hospital in Ireland, and at discharge they shook his hand and said, “Get well, get with your doctor as soon as you get home.”
He asks, “Where’s the bill?”
“No, there’s none.”
“Well, I’m not a citizen.”
“Doesn’t matter.”

There’s a way through this, I think. 

GYB: Yes, very good. Anyone in the audience have a question? 

Audience member (AM) 1: I have a comment. I just have so much love for knowing you and seeing this moment for you, and we’ve known each other for a little while, supporting each other through doing poetry. Just so much love to you and so happy for you in this feature, and it’s so apparent while you’re up there–your heart, just the strength and beauty of who you are. So just really honored to see you up there today. 

HV: I feel that with you. Much love for you, too. 

AM 2: I want to offer you a yard filled with chanterelle mushrooms. (laughs) 

HV: I could use that! 

AM 2: So we’ll get in touch! I don’t not want to talk about art, except if we’re talking about sharing, we have been wondering what to do with them since they’re exploding all over our yard, hundreds of mushrooms. 

HV: I’m coming over after. (laughs) 

AM 3: I have a related question. Where do you go to forage? Is there a particular spot and space that gives you peace? Do you find a way of renewal? Or maybe you don’t want to tell us because it’s your private space. 

HV: No, it is kind of that, but the best place to look for the chanterelle mushrooms, which are the ones coming up now, are oak forests. Oak and beech and hickory. That’s where you’re going to find them this time of year. If you get to know your trees, you’ll know your mushrooms. 

AM 2: It’s also the weather, you have so much really high heat and then rain. 

HV: It’s good. It’s sizing up to be a good year because of the weather. We’ve had all this heavy humidity, even though it’s not raining. Still, the mycelia say, “It’s time to produce the mushroom.” The mushrooms are the fruiting body, they’re not a plant, they’re not an animal. They’re fungus. So it’s just the fruiting body of the part that spreads the seeds. Or spores, in this case. 

GYB: Anyone else have mushrooms to offer Heretic? (laughs) 

AM 4: I don’t have any mushrooms, but I have questions. 

HV: Sure. 

AM 4: So your poetry feels very cathartic, right? It’s how you express something to sort of get rid of a lot of the venom that’s inside of you that’s just… You know, a lot of us are just roiling with anger with what’s going on right now. From where do you derive hope? 

HV: From where do I derive hope? 

AM 4: Yes. 

HV: Ask me in three and a half years. (laughs)

AM 4: (laughing) No, I’m serious. Where do you derive hope? There has to be something that keeps you in balance. 

HV: She’s in the back of the room. Her name is Allison. ::(points to his significant other in the audience):: 

And… (to AM 4) I hear your daughter read her stuff. That gives me hope. You know, I go to MagiKava (a teahouse in New Hope, PA) and some of these other poetry readings where I’m the old guy in the room, and I hear some people that are very cognizant and on the ball about things and really care about them. Greta Thunberg, you know? Somebody has to speak up, otherwise there’s not going to be a world to inherit. And so I understand that there’s a little bit of hope.

‘Cause I grew up in the atrophy of the ’70s where everybody slammed open their brain and thought it was cool to change their head. And there was no change of consciousness from this “pocket protector” state of mind in the 1950s era where everybody had to grow up and work for the corporation. And the Beats got away from that. They said, “Wait a minute, you know what, let’s drop some peyote and do some creative writing.” Now, that all went away by my generation, it became quaaludes and everybody got loaded for the sake of getting loaded. And that’s dysfunction, that’s addiction, it’s no way to live. I lived that way for a while and no longer do it. So when I see somebody come off the street and put the substance down and get their life together, I get hope there.

You know, I look for hope in little places like that. 

AM 5:  Do you write every morning? 

HV: I have the potential to, but it depends on what time I get up. (laughs) You know, I’m stuck in… what’s that show? The Bear? I’m binge watching that. I’m on season four. I’m almost through it. And then I can start getting up early enough when I actually go to bed at a decent hour again. What’ll happen is like the thoughts will come and I’ll be in the shower, and I’ll have to get out and tap them into my phone.

I had dinner with one of the members of the band Tears For Fears- 

GYB: Woah… 

HV: Yeah, I end up around music people, and those people know people. They happen to know Charlton Pettus, who’s in their band. And we had lunch, I talked to them about creative writing, and he said, “Put it all down on the paper. Some of it’s going to be junk, some of it’s going to be great, some of it might be great a year from now. But put it all on the paper.” He said if you let it go for a couple of minutes, it’s going to go POOF! and you can never get it back. I mean, I’m trying to write some more lyrics and I had something that was a little on the heavy side, you know, like a Nine Inch Nails kind of thing. But it was decent, and by accident, instead of copying and pasting, I hit delete… and there was no way to get that back. It wasn’t saved anywhere, it’s gone. I’ve tried to reconstruct it from memory, but it wasn’t the same, and I knew it wasn’t the same, and I just haven’t looked at it since.

So mind the delete button and write it down somewhere.

And he was totally right about it. You know, I revisit some of my stuff and think, “Well, this line goes there and I could add this word, and I can remove that ‘to’ and instead use ‘for,’ and now it all makes a little better sense. Change the tense, change it.” I don’t know the parts of speech like I used to know.

Actually, I got a medal for English when I was a kid. And my first poem was a plagiarism. (laughs) By Ogden Nash. 

“The camel has a single hump; 
The dromedary , two; 
Or else the other way around. 
I’m never sure. Are you?” 

And those words just ring and are perfect in that sort of poem. I wrote it down because I was late for an assignment. I handed it in, I was at a Catholic school, and the nun’s like, “This is so great! It is wonderful, it’s going to get published!” And I’m like, “I’ve got something to admit…” (laughs) So some of my work is kind of Ogden Nash-y and dark. I’m more of a bullet point poet like that. I’ve only written one prose piece, which was a letter to Hunter S. Thompson’s editor. And that was interesting, but I don’t know, maybe I’ve got a short story in me somewhere, but that’s kind of down the road a bit. 

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