Poems by Eleanor Hooker

Interview with Honeybee as Poet
 
 
Q.        What persuaded you?
 
A.         That hunger, insatiable hunger, was their spur,
location too, the thin stony ground.  To be sure,
to survive is to evolve. And in evolving they do not
cede colour, nectar or flamboyance. And therein
lies the honey-rub – carnivorous poets, like
carnivorous flowers, are perpetual traps,
their trumpet and pitcher, their colourful throats.
 
 
Q.        Who are your people?
           
A.         A myth we emerged from the carcass of an Ox –
            my people are a dialect, the pilgrim’s thirst,
a boat bedecked, a tar’s backbone, autumn’s scald,
            September’s shade, a bird’s flight and silken
            song, its abandoned feather, a winter dance,
            syllables on white, a raven’s scratch, ink’s might,
            five freighted eyes, happenstance and hive.
           
 
Q.        What is the speed of dark in your poems?
           
A.         It is the speed of light – what signifies after meaning.
            It is the rate of absence, a barrel of want,
            it is thought, the buzz, a swarm that endures
            as perception only. In the presence of light,
            true darkness is rumour, is noise, is… bright.
 
 
Q.        What is your view?
 
A.         Of the mountain pass, the hairpin, and there,
            the memory of us four on the road, and in the night –
            aurora borealis, Lyra Belacqua and Serafina Pekkala.
            The golden undertow of a cello, as it drags the air
            offshore. Bird-prints on snow, the weight of stones
            in my mind, and from here - hurdles and form,
my clan, the circle and you.
 
 
Q.        What is your advice?
 
A.         Breathe every breath. Regard the echo under siege,
            it repeats the code. Leave distinguishing marks.
            Forget to miss. Startle empty corners with song.
            There is a name for every type of pain, but too
            for every fragrant flower - elect your nomenclature.
            Listen to him laugh, as you drag the devil by his tail.
 


​
The Girl with Bees in her Eye
                        after Eleanor Wilner
 
Pictured in the press, the girl with bees
in her eye was a cabinet of curiosities –
an image of the eye bared.
Surname He, pronouns she/her,
she was from that place.
He was tomb sweeping – a holy rite.
Grave, she knelt above the earth,
filling her basket with weeds,
those most unloved of flowers,
and as is custom, she carried offerings –
coloured paper in cerise, ochre, jade,
silver for the departed, gold for the Gods.
At first they seemed wayward shadow,
leaf shade or dust risen from weed-ash.
She flushed her eye, but it bloomed
and shut its crimson petals.
Light no longer. In his rooms
Dr. Hung everted her lid
and, unforeseen, four bees stirred
in it’s casement, feasting on salt
and moisture, their tiny bodies
wedged. Calmly, and without play
or screams from He, Dr. Hung removed
each sweat-bee alive, and freed of its burden,
He’s sight was saved. Now in a world turned
ever strange, fear grows to dread among us,
as we count the bees, locate clues in an eye.

Eleanor Hooker holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published two collections with Dedalus Press, The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012) shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish Collection, and A Tug of Blue (2016). Her third collection plus two chapbooks are due for publication in 2021. Her poems have appeared in literary journals worldwide. Eleanor’s poem ‘Through the Ears of a Fish’ (Poetry magazine), is shortlisted for Listowel Writers’ Week, Irish Poem of the Year 2020. Eleanor is a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

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