President Michael D Higgins Launch of Machnamh 100

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"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.

A beautiful artefact made by Hans van Eijk of Bonnefant Press, Maastricht, Holland, with frontispiece by Jeanie Tomanek."

Anamaría Crowe Serrano - poet and author

Eleanor Hooker

Apr 111 min read

A really lovely event hosted by President Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin for the Launch of Machnamh 100 Volumes 1 and 2.

Professor Linda Connolly is one of the contributors to Machnamh and it was so great to meet up with Linda, Edel Doherty, Orla Higgins, Frank Fagan and Sarah Blake at the event, all of whom have made massive contributions to the Decade of Centenary Commemorations.

A great pleasure to chat to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin at the event too.

Listen to Orla Higgins and Sarah Blake's powerful RTÉ Documentary on One 'Dark Night in Foxford', which gives a deeply moving account of the events in 1923 that changed Maggie Doherty’s life forever. With contributions from Maggie's Great niece Edel Doherty, from Linda Connolly and Frank Fagan.

I wrote poems for Maggie in my Markievicz Award book 'Where Memory Lies'

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