Goodbye, Beautiful World: Henry Shukman

Part of a special event series during the exhibition of Un-Known Paths at Ellsworth Gallery by Christy Hengst. See christyhengst.com for the full schedule of events.

Henry Shukman will be reading poems from a new collection he is working on, provisionally titled Goodbye, Beautiful World.

Henry Shukman started writing poems as a young teen and has published poems over many years in New Republic, London Review of Books, Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, and Financial Times. The more recent of his two collections, Archangel, came out in 2013. He has spent much of the last twelve years teaching Zen and meditation at Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe. This will be his first reading of the new poems.

Un-known Paths explores themes of pathways, stillness, and listening. Developing from decades of hiking the land around Santa Fe, many of the paintings cluster around specific paths (Sun Mountain, Aspen Vista, Chamisa Trail) or specific plants encountered along the way (yucca, mullein, piñon).

As much as this work is about specific places, it’s also about returning to a place of not-knowing and building intimacy through renewed curiosity.

This exhibition will also include some new birds, descended from the traveling public art project birds in the park.