Ep274: Poetry & the Sacred - Henry Shukman & John Brehm
I host a dialogue between Henry Shukman, British poet, Zen teacher, and author of ‘One Blade of Grass; a Zen memoir’; and John Brehm, American poet and author of ‘The Dharma of Poetry’.
Available on Youtube, iTunes, SoundCloud & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast’.
Henry and John share the story of their formations as poets, compare the similarities as well as the marked differences in their backgrounds, and reveal the powerful forces that inspire the creative process.
Henry and John discuss the purpose and process of writing poetry, reflect on poetry as a means of contact with the sacred, and contrast the richness of poetry with attentional practices such as mindfulness and Zen.
Henry and John also perform and discuss several of their poems, including “Walk the Talk”, “Swifts”, “Yahrzeit”, and “Finis Ter”.
00:00 - Intro
00:56 - Henry’s early interest in poetry
03:45 - Poetry and spiritual practice
06:04 - What is it to be alive?
06:30 - Searching for the charge
06:51 - First profound experience of writing poetry
08:17 - Poetry that awakes
09:25 - John’s unliterary family background
12:00 - John’s psychedelic experiences in the 1970s
13:23 - Poetry as a way to evoke luminosity
14:37 - Contact with the sacred
15:11 - Henry reflects on John’s early life
15:57 - Henry’s unusual parents
17:23 - Inner freedom and childhood trauma
18:01 - Imagist and Tang dynasty poets
20:08 - The Beat poet and a different way of living
20:54 - Intimacy and rediscovering landscape
22:26 - Seeing beauty in the ordinary and discarded
24:41 - It’s about quality of attention
26:01 - Attracted to the neglected
29:25 - The curse of being a public poet
30:09 - No allies and no encouragement
32:01 - John’s first poetry teacher
33:08 - The audience
34:40 - Poetry only works without purpose
35:32 - Recognising the false note
36:54 - Henry’s process of composition and revision
38:24 - Great poets of the past as audience
39:43 - A R Ammons an writing for an audience
40:20 - Henry’s dream for his poetry
41:52 - The chore of mindfulness
43:09 - Remembering your True Self
43:31 - The sacred pause
44:28 - Temporary enlightenment
45:31 - Poetry is richer than mindfulness
47:28 - Beauty beyond mere mindfulness
49:28- Focusing on what you love
49:59 - Using language to go beyond language
50:54 - Autopoiesis and memetic fulfilment
53:25 - Poet as conduit
55:32 - Radical awakening
57:00 - Banishing the beautiful
58:13 - Seamus Heaney on poetry as redress
59:24 - Collective awakening of consciousness
01:00:20 - Reciprocity and post-medieval alienation
01:01:20 - Hospicing modernity
01:02:30 - Why publish poems?
01:04:27 - John reads “Walk the Talk”
01:06:03 - Reflecting on success as poets
01:09:08 - John reads “Swifts”
01:12:48 - Henry reads “Yahrzeit”
01:18:22 - Henry reads “Finis Ter”
01:19:26 - Appreciation and gratitude
Previous episodes with Henry Shukman:
Previous episode with John Brehm:
Find out more about Henry Shukman:
Find out more about John Brehm:
Music ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James