Henry Munn is a writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 who studied the use of hallucinogenic plants by the Conibo Indians

Shipibo-Conibo

-Population:The name refers to two languages spoken by these ethnic groups. They are primarily a riverine people living in the Amazon basin, primarily along the Ucayali River. Contact with western sources – including the governments of Peru and Brazil – has been sporadic over the past three...

 of eastern Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 and also the Mazatec Indians of the mountains of Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

. He made numerous contributions to the field of ethnopoetics

Ethnopoetics

Ethnopoetics is a poetic movement and subfield in linguistics, and anthropology. It was coined as a term by Jerome Rothenberg in collaboration with George Quasha in 1968, when Quasha asked Rothenberg to create a term using 'ethnos' and 'poetics' on the model of 'ethnomusicology' for inclusion in...

, a vaguely defined movement of twentieth century experimental poetry aiming to build upon and preserve the writings and traditions of so-called "deep cultures - those surviving in situ as well as those that had vanished except for transcriptions in books or recordings from earlier decades..."

Munn's writings on psychedelics, specifically his widely-read essay "The Mushrooms of Language", have influenced the prolific proponent of hallucinogens Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...

, as cited in his book Food of the Gods.