Christian Shockley: Poetry as Equipment for Living (Pt. 2)

S02, E10 \\ People Watching: Season Two

Megan J. Robinson

Jul 22, 2025

Transcript

Greetings, friends!!

Y’all, I can’t think of a better conversation partner with whom to close out this season of People Watching than Christian Shockley, poet, teacher, explorer, and friend. I think the second half of our conversation got even better than the first, if that’s possible!

I first met Christian a few years ago, when I was interviewing vendors for learning management systems. In that process, I discovered Pathwright, where Christian serves as the Head of EdLabs and Learning Experience Design. I immediately appreciated Christian’s learning-first mindset, his obvious creativity, and his curiosity about the world and how we talk about our experiences.

Please note that this episode does touch on difficult experiences, which include the loss of a loved one due to suicide. If you or a loved one are in crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline; the website is https://988lifeline.org/.

In addition to his work at Pathwright, Christian also works as the Head of Training at Readyy AI, and the Director of Sales Enablement for ASAPP, where he designs curricula, playbooks, and competency-based onboarding for teams. Busy guy! Christian is a graduate of King’s College London, and when he’s not working, he can be found at his leather-working bench, or writing on pedagogy, poetry, and digital learning.

Our conversation explored how we learn to listen to the stories that role models tell us. We also sung poetry to each other, sharing our favorite Christian Wiman and Lucille Clifton poems. It was delightful.

Make sure to like, share, comment, subscribe, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Writers love having written AND being read. Who else needs to read this today?