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 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