"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
It was lovely to participate in ‘The Water’ event’ alongside Nóirin Lynch and Catherine Ann Cullen as part of the ‘Its not a long way to Tipperary’ series. The event was curated by Aileen Lambert and Michael Fortune (folklore.ie) as part of a commission by The Arts & Library Services of Tipperary County Council for their 2020 Tipperary Bealtaine Programme. Read More
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...
Drove to Carlow today to see the 'Dreamtime Ireland' exhibition in which George Hooker & Rónán Ó Raghallaigh have an amazing installation...
Happy to be involved in a great project alongside amazing poets at Jamie Murphy’s multi-award winning Salvage Press, a letterhead press....
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