Divining Dante

top of page

Broadcasts

Broadcasts

Broadcasts

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

Music Art

Music Art

Search

Eleanor Hooker
May 11, 2023
1 min read

A tremendous evening 3 March celebrating Dante at the Italian Institute of Culture in Ireland in Dublin with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann as co-hosts, for the Poetry Jukebox launch. Fabulous to read alongside Mary O'Donnell and Joseph Woods, to hear Igor Candido, Head of Italian at Trinity College Dublin, talk about Dante and Artist Liam O’Broin speak so eloquently on his lithographs inspired by The Divine Comedy. Poet Nessa O'Mahony chaired the event. Read More

Recent Posts

Poet of the Month - The Lonely Crowd

My thanks to John Lavin, editor at The Lonely Crowd , who earlier this year invited me to submit 2 new poems for his February Poet of the...

An tobar agus an Chloch - The Well and the Stone George Hooker & Rónán Ó Raghallaigh

Drove to Carlow today to see the 'Dreamtime Ireland' exhibition in which George Hooker & Rónán Ó Raghallaigh have an amazing installation...

The Salvage Press

Happy to be involved in a great project alongside amazing poets at Jamie Murphy’s multi-award winning Salvage Press, a letterhead press....

Comments

bottom of page