200 Voices: An RNLI Podcast 56. Float to Live: Eleanor Hooker

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Cover, Legion, Eleanor Hooker.jpg

"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

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Eleanor Hooker
Oct 19, 2023
1 min read

I've been a volunteer (a helm and our station Lifeboat Press Officer) with Lough Derg RNLI lifeboat (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) since 2003.

Nothing compares to the feeling of working with a team of fellow volunteers out in a storm, to get to casualties and to being them home safely. When Niamh Stephenson, RNLI Media Manager for Ireland, invited me to write a poem to celebrates the charity's 200 birthday in 2024 and to speak on the 200Voices podcast, I didn't hesitate. Thanks so much to Adventuous Audio who did an amazing job for my and the other voices on the podcast. Listen here Read my poem 'Float to Live' here

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