Launch of 'Of Ochre and Ash'

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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 21, 2021

1 min read

My third collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) was launched on October 8 at Lough Derg Yacht Club. Author Donal Ryan introduced the book and I was deeply touched by his kindness and his extraordinary praise for the poems. It is every poet's dream to have their writing considered so thoroughly and so generously by a writer they hold in such high esteem.

Dr. Christine O'Malley MC'd the launch. It was a joy to be amongst friends and family once more.

My grateful thanks to John Glenday for his sage advice as first reader of my manuscript. Warm thanks too to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin for her thoughtful considerations on the poems in the collection, and to Thomas McCarthy and Nessa O'Mahony for their encouragement. My thanks and acknowledgement to James Harpur and Pat Boran at the Dedalus Press.

Mes sincères remerciements à Véronique Papuereau pour sa permission d’utiliser sa belle peinture ‘Un second souffle’ pour l’image de couverture pour ce livre.

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