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Jeremy Hooker

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Jeremy hooker

Jeremy Hooker. Courtesy Enitharmon Books.

Jeremy Hooker (born 1941) is an English poet, literary critic, academic, and broadcaster.[1]

Life[]

Hooker was born in Warsash, near Southampton, Hampshire. He grew up on the edge of the New Forest village of Pennington, about 2 miles north of Lymington.[2]

After studying at the University of Southampton, Hooker lectured at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.[3] living in Aberystwyth, and then in 1969 moving to the nearby Welsh-speaking parish of Llangwyryfon. Hooker left Llangwyrfron around 1980, spending 2 years as a creative writing fellow at Winchester School of Art.[4]

In 1984 he left the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Subsequently he lived for a while in Holland, teaching at the University of Groningen, before moving to Frome in 1989 and teaching creative writing at the Bath College of Higher Education. This later became Bath Spa University and he was the 1st director of its MA in Creative Writing.

Hooker spent the academic year 1994/5 teaching at Le Moine College in upstate New York.[5] More recently he was a lecturer at the University of Glamorgan, from which he retired in 2008, becoming emeritus professor of the University.[6]

He has published 11 full length collections of poetry (including selected and collected works), critical studies of John Cowper Powys and David Jones, as well as collections of literary essays. He has also edited works by Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas, Frances Bellerby, Wilfred Owen. In addition Hooker has been involved with works for radio, including "A Map of David Jones".[7]

Writing[]

When asked in an interview about his influence,s Hooker listed Richard Jeffries, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas and later David Jones, along with American Objectivist poets William Carlos Williams and George Oppen.[8] Hooker began reading Jefferies when he was twelve.[9] Another important early influence was the fact that Hooker's father was a landscape painter, who had a great love of Constable.[10]

The move to Wales in 1965 was important for Hooker's development both as poet and as critic,[11] and during the 1970s he established himself as an important critic of Welsh writing in English (Anglo-Welsh literature) and was involved with teaching a course in Welsh writing in English, which had been created by Ned Thomas at Aberytwyth.[12]

But the tension of being a "foreigner" in Wales led Hooker to selling his house in Llangwyryfon, in 1980: "I owe no place more than Llangwyryfon, but it has taken eleven years of living there, in an agricultural and predominantly Welsh-speaking community, for us to realise that our particular kind of dislocation can't be mended by settling permanently where other people belong".[13] While living there he published 3 books of poetry that deal with his earlier experience of life in Southern England: Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant(1974) (winner in 1974 of the Welsh Arts Council Literature Prize), Landscape of the Daylight Moon (1978), Solent Shore (1978), and a fourth collection that focussed more on his experience of living in Wales: Englishman's Road (1980).

A concern with place and landscape, in relation to personal identity, is central to both Hooker's poetry and to his critical writing, as is " the relation between poetry and the sacred".[14]

Hooker's collected poems The Cut of the Light: Poems, 1965-2005 was published by Enitharmon Press in 2006, and in 2007 Moment of Earth: Poems and essays in honour of Jeremy Hooker, edited by Christopher Meredith, was published by Celtic Studies.

Recognition[]

The Cut of the Light: Poems, 1965-2005 was on the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Long List.[15]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • The Elements (pamphlet). Swansea, Wales, UK: C. Davies 1972.
  • Greetings. England: privately published, 1976.
  • Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant. London: Enitharmon, 1974.
  • Landscape of the Daylight Moon. London: Enitharmon, 1978.
  • Solent Shore. Manchester: Carcanet, 1978.
  • 'Dragons in the Snow. London: Eric & Joan Stevens, 1979.
  • Englishman's Road. Manchester: Carcanet, 1980.
  • A view from the Source: Selected poems. Manchester: Carcanet, 1982.
  • Itchen Water: Poems. (pamphlet) Winchester, UK: Winchester School of Art Press, 1982.
  • 'Three Poems. Leamington Spa, UK: Other Branch Readings, 1983.
  • Master of the Leaping Figures. Petersfield, UK: Enitharmon, 1987.
  • Their Silence a Language (illustrated by Lee Grandjean). Ipswich, UK: Ipswich Borough Council, 1990; London: Enitharmon, 1992.
  • Groundwork: Sculpture by Lee Grandjean, with poems by Jeremy Hooker. Nottingham, UK: Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham Arts Centre, 1998.
  • Adamah. London: Enitharmon, 2002.
  • Our Lady of Europe. London: Enitharmon, 1997.
  • Reflections on Ground & Seventeen Poems. Free Poetry, 2005.
  • Arnolds Wood. Birmingham, UK: Flarestack, 2005.
  • The Cut of the Light: Poems, 1965-2005. London: Enitharmon, 2006.

Non-fiction[]

  • John Cowper Powys. Cardiff: University of Wales Press / Welsh Arts Council, 1973.
  • David Jones : An exploratory study of the writings. London: Enitharmon, 1975.
  • John Cowper Powys and David Jones: A comparative study. London: Enitharmon, 1979.
  • Poetry of Place: Essays and reviews, 1970-1981. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1982.
  • The Presence of the Past: Essays on modern British and American poetry. Bridgend, Wales, UK: Poetry Wales Press, 1987.
  • Writers in a Landscape. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997.
  • Imagining Wales : A view of modern Welsh Writing in English. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001.

Edited[]

  • Alun Lewis, Selected Poems (selected by Hooker & Gweno Lewis; foreword by Robert Graves; afterword by Hooker). London: Unwin, 1981.
  • Frances Bellerby, Selected Stories. (edited & with introduction by Hooker). London: Enitharmon, 1997.
  • Alun Lewis Inwards Where All the Battle is: A selection of Alun Lewis's Writings from India (illustrated by David Gentleman). Newtown, Powys, Wales, UK: Gwasg Gregynog, 1997.
  • Richard Jefferies, At Home on the Earth: A new selection of the later writings of Richard Jeffries (selected & introduced by Hooker; illustrations by Agnes Miller Parker). Totnes, Devon, UK: Green Books, 2001.
  • Edward Thomas, The Ship of Swallows : A selection of short stories (edited & with introduction by Hooker; preface by Myfanwy Thomas). London: Enitharmon, 2005.
  • Richard Jefferies, The Story of My Heart: My autobiography (edited & with ntroduction by Hooker). Dartington, UK: Green Books, 2002.
  • Wilfred Owen, Mapping Golgotha: Letters and poems. (Selected, edited, & with introduction by Hooker; illustrated by Harry Brockway). Newtown, Powys, Wales, UK: Gwasg Gregynog, 2007.

Journals[]

  • Welsh Journal (biography). Pen-y-Bont ar Ogwr, Wales, UK: Seren Books, 2001.
  • Upstate: A North American journal. Exeter, Devon, UK: Shearsman Books, 2007.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[16]

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ www.poetryarchive.org
  2. ↑ Writers in a Landscape, xi.
  3. ↑ Imagining Wales 188, 190.
  4. ↑ see Welsh Journal
  5. ↑ See Upstate: A North American Journal Exeter, Devon: Shearsman Books, 2007.
  6. ↑ Enitharmon
  7. ↑ acknowledgements to "Our Lady in Europe".
  8. ↑ Brittle Star Magazine.
  9. ↑ The Poetry of Place 170.
  10. ↑ Writers in a Landscape, vii.
  11. ↑ See "Introduction" to Imagining Wales.
  12. ↑ Imagining Wales, 4.
  13. ↑ "Afterword" to A View from the Source.
  14. ↑ "Free Poetry"
  15. ↑ Hooker, Jeremy, Writers of Wales Database. Web, Jan. 25, 2013.
  16. ↑ Search results = au:Jeremy Hooker, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 25, 2014.

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