Broadcasts
Broadcasts
Broadcasts
"There are chapbooks, and there are chapbooks. And then there is Legion by Eleanor Hooker.
Letterset by hand, crafted in the old style, these 8 poems sing of honeybees and intone the "trembling water of the lake". Eleanor's work is evocative as always, teeming with the profusion of nature and its gifts and the people who interact with these, in good ways and bad. Echoes of Yeats's "bee-loud glade" come to mind, not just because of the theme but for the texture of the language too.
But Eleanor's words focus on the feminine, weaving images like spells cast over the page, words to harness the energy of the natural world that most of us don't understand but that lead the poet "to wheedle with words".
The honeybee with all its associations - productivity, sweet honey, its sting, the drone reproducing only to die - is a charming metaphor for the many dichotomies of life as well as the greed that abounds in society, where the bee-elect is "trapped in the syrup of its own success".
A beautiful artefact made by Hans van Eijk of Bonnefant Press, Maastricht, Holland, with frontispiece by Jeanie Tomanek."
Anamaría Crowe Serrano - poet and author
"There are chapbooks, and there are chapbooks. And then there is Legion by Eleanor Hooker.
Letterset by hand, crafted in the old style, these 8 poems sing of honeybees and intone the "trembling water of the lake". Eleanor's work is evocative as always, teeming with the profusion of nature and its gifts and the people who interact with these, in good ways and bad. Echoes of Yeats's "bee-loud glade" come to mind, not just because of the theme but for the texture of the language too.
But Eleanor's words focus on the feminine, weaving images like spells cast over the page, words to harness the energy of the natural world that most of us don't understand but that lead the poet "to wheedle with words".
The honeybee with all its associations - productivity, sweet honey, its sting, the drone reproducing only to die - is a charming metaphor for the many dichotomies of life as well as the greed that abounds in society, where the bee-elect is "trapped in the syrup of its own success".
A beautiful artefact made by Hans van Eijk of Bonnefant Press, Maastricht, Holland, with frontispiece by Jeanie Tomanek."
Anamaría Crowe Serrano - poet and author
Interviews
With Peter Sirr and Endy Wyley on Books for Breakfast Read More
With Ciarán O'Rourke on Island's Edge Poetry Read More
With Rob McClennan 12 or 20 Questions Read More
With Dedalus Press 7 Questions on Poetry ReadMore
With Sue Leonard for Beginners Pluck, Irish Examiner Read More
With Saving Lives at Sea, Season 5 Ep. 4 & 7 BBCTwo television RNLI documentary Watch Here
With Tracy Gaughan for The Blue Nib Literary Magazine Read More
With Ruth McKee in the Irish Times Read More
With Brian Kirk at the Bray Literary Festival's Singing in the Wild Dark Watch Here
With Vick Lovegrove-Fray for Give It A Go: Poetry, for the RNLI lifeboat magazine Read More
With Amanda Bell in conversation with Paul Perry for a special edition of Words Lightly Spoken podcast, to celebrate the Winter issue of Poetry Ireland Review, the final issue to be edited by the late Eavan Boland Listen Here
With Nikole Eugeniou for Other Terrain Journal (Swinburne University, Melbourne) Read More
With Nessa O'Mahony for The Attic Sessions Watch Here
With SándorJászberényi for Hungarian newspaper 24 Read More
With Bethany Hope for RNLI Lifeboat Magazine Read More
With Jo Ely for Woven Tale Press Read More
With Nuala Ní Chonchúir Read More
With Kate Dempsey Read More