RNLI Service of Thanksgiving, Westminster Abbey

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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
Apr 11, 2024
1 min read

An incredible honour to be one of the representatives from Lough Derg RNLI at the Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey to mark the RNLIs 200th birthday. Especially too as I read my poem ‘Float to Live’ as part of the service.

It was an extraordinarily moving event - awe inspiring to see so many fellow volunteers gathered under one hugely impressive vaulted roof.

Rehearsals the evening before the service ensured everything went with clockwork precision the following morning.

Huge thanks to Eleanor Driscoll who looked after Peter and I so well at Westminster, and Niamh Stephenson and Judy Nelson for asking me to write the poem and creating this opportunity for me.

You can watch the service here

Read more here and here and here

The Times and The Sunday Times An hour or so following the Service of Thanksgiving, Barbara Rose at RTÉ invited me to speak live on the Ray D’Arcy show (thanks to RNLI Nuala McAloon for connecting us) - after a mad dash across London, finding the correct building at BBC Broadcasting House and going through security checks, I arrived, slightly disheveled, in the recording booth with less than two minutes to go - it was an absolute delight to chat to Ray live on air.

You can listen here

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