If you are using double quotes for the heredoc, you can just store the pod directives in scalar variables: 
my $pod   = '=pod';
my $head1 = '=head1'; 
print DOCFILE <<"DOCS";
$pod

$head1 NAME

$programName
...

DOCS

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In reply to Re: Ignoring embedded POD by choroba
in thread Ignoring embedded POD by Anonymous Monk

Title:
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