Podcast Summary: "Henry Shukman: How to Tell Stories Through Poetry"

Podcast: How I Write
Host: David Perell
Guest: Henry Shukman (Poet, Novelist, Essayist, Zen Teacher)
Date: December 17, 2025

Overview:

In this illuminating conversation, David Perell sits down with Henry Shukman, a highly regarded poet, novelist, essayist, and long-term meditator, to explore the mysterious and alchemical process of writing, particularly poetry. The episode weaves through Shukman’s poetic beginnings, his lifelong dedication to meditation, and his philosophy that great writing is less about control and more about surrender and intimacy with experience. The discussion embraces themes of wonder, romanticism, and the interplay between logic ("logos") and mystery ("mythos") in both art and life.

Key Discussion Points and Insights:

1. Origin Story: The Awakening into Poetry

• Henry’s initial draw to writing stemmed from his encounter as a teenager (12-14) with "Speedy," a wandering tramp in the Oxford countryside. Speedy’s different way of being alive awakened something in Henry.
  • “He had this strange energy and presence about him that was unlike anybody else I knew. And he just... I recognized he was alive in a different way.” (02:12)
• Henry describes experiencing poetry as a channeling of a deeper, unconscious energy—something “not under conscious control.”
• The act of writing poetry made him unexpectedly more "alive and awake," allowing him to say something he didn’t know he needed to say.
  • “At the end of it, I didn’t know what had just happened to me. I was alive and awake in a way I never had been before, trembling.” (02:45)

2. Poetry as Channel vs. Craft

• Perell asks whether Henry’s poetic moments are more like channeling an exterior spirit or translating an interior sense into words.
  • Shukman affirms it’s not frantic but a release of energy from a “part of me that I did not have conscious control over.” (03:37)
  • The most genuine poems, he says, "come up from some other source," not by deliberate planning, though editorial refinement follows.

3. Destiny or Choice: Becoming a Writer

• Henry discusses discovering, not deciding, his vocation as a writer—his clarity about this developed early, through travel and the experience of letting energy “come through” in his work abroad, particularly in Argentina.
  • “I just. I managed to get out of the way and let a much larger energy come through that wanted to evoke what it found beautiful about this place.” (07:41)

4. The Purpose of Art: Conveying Experience, Not Facts

• Comparison with painting: David shares an anecdote about a Monet exhibit to highlight the difference between recording (logos) and evoking impressions (mythos).
• Henry agrees, distinguishing between writing that records facts (like Darwin’s journals) versus writing that conveys meaning, feeling, and spiritual resonance.
  • “The purpose is to convey an experience.” (10:56)
• Great art, whether painting, music, or writing, wakes us up to our own capacity for conscious experience.

5. Logos & Mythos: The Two Kinds of Knowing

• Henry draws on the ancient Greeks (Socrates and Plato), explaining the distinction between logos (reason, analysis) and mythos (myth, mystery).
• Modernity, especially post-Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment, overvalued logos and lost touch with mythos—a key reason for feeling emotionally or spiritually dry.
  • “There’s a whole world also that will forever be mysterious. And we want to be staying open somehow to both and using both.” (13:10)

6. The Fear Barrier in Writing

• Shukman describes a recurring ‘fear barrier’ before releasing into genuine poetry—letting go of control, submitting to deeper energies, and stepping into unknown territory.
  • “There’s a little bit of a fear, like a hump to get over, or a little bit of a barrier to go through. And then the energy is there that’s much deeper than... I could come up with consciously.” (18:53)
• Perell resonates: “All the best things I’ve ever written and produced came from that release. Therefore, the thing that I should do is always surrender to that flow.” (19:44)
• Discussion of the evolutionary roots of control and the mind’s reluctance to surrender.

7. Art from Suffering: Poetry as Digesting Hardship

• The pair discuss the role of poetry and storytelling in expressing, digesting, and ultimately healing deep grief or suffering—a motif reflected in Shukman’s poem “Frozen Lake.”
  • Poem Reading: “Frozen Lake” (22:57–24:40)
    • Notable lines: “For those who had it all as they’d hoped, who crossed the frozen lake from one side to the other, never guessing the great dark beneath. But those for whom the lake cracked and opened… there is no consolation, nor is any needed.”
    • “It allows us, as the poet, to digest our life...” (25:21)
• Revisiting and writing about such experiences, after emotional distance, is the “secret ingredient of poetry.”

8. On Shame, Empathy, and Art

• Literature and art allow us to see and feel the difficult emotions of others, often those we hide from ourselves (e.g., shame).
• Personal story: Henry wrestled with shame, in part due to severe childhood eczema, and found writing about it healing.
  • “I think writing was a big part of that. You know, I wrote about it and I wrote about it very frankly.” (34:16)

9. Meditation and Writing: The Intertwined Path

• Meditation, for Henry, is “a lesson in reducing control”—akin to writing’s creative surrender.
  • “Meditation is kind of hell if you’re trying to control it... that controlling path softens and recognizes. It can take a back seat... you’re just letting experience be what it is.” (35:10)
• Inspiration from meditative writers of the Beat Generation (Kerouac, Snyder), and the importance of “catching the big fish” (as per David Lynch).

10. Crafting, Editing, and Process

• Henry emphasizes the challenge of rewriting: entering the right mindset to preserve the original spirit, balancing intuition with revision.
  • On editing: “You don’t want to cut live flesh… get the feel for what is actually a living part of this thing that I must not amputate.” (43:06)
• Poetry, he finds, is more manageable than fiction due to its contained nature.

11. Mediums and Lessons: Rapid Fire

• Fiction:
  • Importance of caring deeply about your protagonist’s practical and spiritual problems.
  • “The third most important character… is the place.” (56:28)
• Memoir:
  • Find and focus on the central quest or “thread.”
  • “It was not about Henry, it was about this very particular thread.” (59:08)
• Poetry:
  • Most closely aligned with meditation; poetry is the art of momentary, embodied attentiveness.
  • “Poetry is absolutely a tracking of present moment experience.” (64:14)
• Koans:
  • Zen riddles that scramble logic, intending to push the practitioner beyond thinking into “the mystery.”
  • “They have to teach you themselves.” (66:13)
  • Notable koan: “What is the sound of one hand?” (67:24)
  • Paradox as an essential feature—beyond rational thought.

12. Intimacy with the World: Writing as Wonder

• For Henry, the motive and outcome of writing was always “greater intimacy with the world”—whether embodied by snow on the pavement or the silence in a city.
  • “The body is made of the same stuff as the world... So poetry is tracking back to the body as part of the earth.” (75:27)
• Details bring the world and characters to life—“God is in the details.” (72:50)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments:

• On the nature of poetic creation:

  • “I don’t write the poem... What works is it comes up from some other source.” (03:37)

• On art and experience:

  • “When a writer is conveying that... it wakes it up in us.” (10:09)

• On mythos and mystery:

  • “There’s a whole world also that will forever be mysterious. And we want to be staying open somehow to both...” (13:10)

• On the necessity of suffering in art and life:

  • “Those for whom the lake cracked and opened, who fell into its unspeakable night while still walking upright in the light of this world... For them there is no consolation, nor is any needed.” (23:15, Frozen Lake)

• On editing:

  • “You don’t want to cut live flesh... you’ve got to get the feel for what is actually a living part of this thing.” (43:06)

• On the role of place in fiction:

  • “The third most important character in every work of fiction is the place. Let the place inform the story. The place is everything.” (56:28)

• On poetry and meditation:

  • “Poetry is so close to meditation. It’s the closest because it is about the immediate experience of the moment.” (64:14)

• On paradox and koans:

  • “I think it makes perfect sense [that] paradox is where our ordinary thought processes get scrambled. They don’t work there.” (69:50)

• On writing and the body:

  • “The real poet lives is the body, not the mind. The body uses the mind.” (75:00)

Timestamps for Significant Segments:

• 00:42: Henry describes his awakening to poetry as a teenager
• 03:37: On the process of writing, inspiration vs. deliberate effort
• 10:09: Conveying experience vs. fact—what great writing does
• 12:42: The ancient Greek distinction between "logos" and "mythos"
• 17:17: Discussion on balancing control and surrender in the creative process
• 22:57: Reading and reflection on “Frozen Lake”
• 34:16: Writing and overcoming shame
• 35:10: How meditation parallels the creative process
• 43:06: The art and mindset of editing work without damaging it
• 55:38: The role of protagonist and place in fiction
• 59:08: Memoir writing—finding the narrative “thread”
• 64:14: Poetry as the apex of present-moment awareness and embodiment
• 66:13 - 69:50: Zen koans and the role of paradox in deep wisdom
• 72:50: The power of sensory details in writing
• 75:00: Writing through the body, letting the world speak through the writer

Poetry Readings and Moments of Embodiment:

• Frozen Lake (22:57-24:40)
• First Snow (73:27-74:33)
• Rain at Night (78:59-80:35)
  • All three poems serve as moving examples of Henry’s approach—writing as embodied, attentive, and birthed from deep experience.

Closing Reflection: "Writing from the Heart"

Perell ends by asking about writing and living from the heart. Henry responds by reading his poem “Rain at Night” and articulating that the core is being “simply listening”—to the rain, to the world, to one’s own heart. The episode concludes with the affirmation that poetry (and great writing) is fundamentally a practice in being awake to the mysteries and details of life, and that meditation and art both serve to root us in this wonder.

Recommended for:
Writers, poets, artists, meditators, and anyone interested in the intersection of creative process and spiritual presence. This episode will appeal to those seeking to deepen their own writing or artistic life, or who wish to experience a poet’s view of the world as charged with meaning and mystery.

“Poetry is absolutely a tracking of present moment experience.” —Henry Shukman (64:14)

“God is in the details. The wonder is in the details.” —Henry Shukman (72:50)

“For me, writing from the earliest times was about greater intimacy with the world.” —Henry Shukman (70:48)