Hi everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to work in progress, where I talk to people who inspire me about how they got to where they are and where they think they're still going.

Today on work in progress, I am thrilled to share my conversation with an incredible and amazing word Smith.

He's adventurous, self-examining, and dedicated to evolving and helping others evolve as well.

He feels incredibly timely as we look toward an end year. Today's guest is Mr. David White.

David is an accomplished poet and associate fellow at SAID Business School at the University of Oxford.

He grew up in Yorkshire to an Irish mother and an English father, and his love of poetry in the natural world started very early in his life.

Rather than formally study poetry and literature, David took a different path and earned a degree in marine zoology after being inspired by Jacques Stowe.

He was a nature guide in the Galapagos Islands and led tours into the Himalayas.

All of his adventurous travels ended up leading him right back to poetry.

David has published several books of poetry and prose including The Bell and the Blackbird, Everything is Waiting for You, and the House of Belonging.

He also has the unique credential of bringing poetry into the corporate world for the purpose of enhancing leadership.

On today's episode, David and I discuss the robustness of vulnerability being ravished by the natural world, and how sometimes you have to start undoing yourself in order to progress.

We sat down via Zoom to share ideas about destiny, finding yourself, and how poetry is in his words, the language against which we have no defenses.

If you've been hoping to see a little more poetry in the world lately, this episode is definitely for you.

David, I'm so excited that you've joined me on the podcast today. I'm such a fan of your work, and I think even more of your way of looking at the world, and to be able to dig in with you over the next hour, so about where you find inspiration is something I'm really looking forward to, so thanks.

My pleasure. Good to be speaking with you.

There's a place I would love to start as a fan of poetry and the planet and learning, which are three things that you study and teach so beautifully.

I think there's really no way to avoid coming across your work, and there was something I read you were interviewed about your collection, The Bell and the Blackbird,

and the person interviewing you asked about this recurring meme in Irish poetry, among who stands and hears the bell calling him to prayer, and you went into the most beautiful answer about it, and you talked about the bell as a call to prayer, calling you to a greater context to the one that you inhabit, and that the Blackbird is the world calling to you as it finds you.

You went in to speak about contemplation and the crossroads that people live in constantly, simultaneously. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, I think that meme isn't just an Irish meme. It takes that particular Irish form Irish monasticism was so singular and so particular to that to Irish culture, but it's really the invitation in all of our great contemplation.

We have a lot of great contemplative traditions to live at the crossroads, conversational crossroads, the invetational crossroads between going deeper, coming to ground, getting below the horizon of your personality, and going out and meeting all the horizons of the world,

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