"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
An honour to participate in the virtual ‘No Borders Art Festival’, Ottowa, Canada, this weekend. With thanks to Patsea Griffin for the invitation to participate.
“No Borders Art festival is for everyone First Nations, Metis, Inuit, Immigrants, Refugees, New Comers, Non-Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+ people in the BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Colour, People with disabilities. All people are welcome.' Read More
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
October 5 - A really special evening to open the 20th anniversary of the Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival (I was a founder member of the fesitval and Programme Curator until I retired in 2017)and to
20 -23 September - The inaugural Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary was a resounding success. Thanks so much to Una Johnston and Tori Morran, for the invitation to curate