A Writer Who Cannot Howl Will Not Find His Pack - some thoughts on poetry and process - By Eleanor Hooker

Q: Eleanor, could you outline your poetry influences?

The poetry books in my home growing up were by Yeats, Thomas Kinsella and Kavanagh, and so those were the poets I read and loved first.

It was a gift to read Sylvia Plath and discover her unflinching, disruptive, blistering poetry.

I would say that reading Paula Meehan gave me permission to be brave in my writing, to discard old and limiting notions of what a poem should consist in.

I love to read Charles Simic for his magic realism, his surrealism and the uncanny. John Glenday’s poetry is a standard bearer for me, the way in which he removes all the scaffolding, how every word on every magnificent line, earns its place. Years ago, my sons went to great lengths to get his first collection, The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets) for me for Christmas, a perfect gift.

My shelves sag with poetry books by friends, by poets at home and from all over the world. I support poets by buying their books and reading them. The danger of lists is the risk of causing offence by omission.

Q: Do you have a regular writing practice?  What might that look like?

I write every day, not always poetry, it might be an RNLI Press Release, an article about a festival I curate, an invitation letter to a guest speaker for an event, or a submission letter. Each of these types of writing requires creativity and attention to detail. I try to get to my desk at 8.30 a.m., after the first long walk of the day. I used to write at the kitchen table, but was constantly distracted by guilt over undone domestic chores.

I remember visiting Virginia Woolf’s writing shed at Monk House and thinking how lovely it would be to have a dedicated writing place like that. A couple of years ago Peter and I restored a tiny two room cottage in our woods and that’s where I work now. It’s off grid, has a solar powered battery for electricity, no running water, no loo. It’s perfect. Beautiful light and the right kind of quiet.

I used to listen to cello music when I wrote poetry, but it doesn’t work for me to do that any longer, I need to listen, to focus on the poem developing in my mind. Curiously, I’ve no problem listening to music when I’m writing prose. On days when I’m too mithered to work, I read, and walk, and listen to podcasts and audiobooks. I am a member of a poetry workshop. It’s invaluable to have people I deeply respect read and give feedback on new work.

Q: What do you think are the necessary elements that make a good poem?

Surprise. Musicality. Language pressed into new and unique meanings, that remake the world. Authenticity; whatever emotion or idea a poem is harnessing, it must be earned. Readers have functioning BS detectors and know if they’re being manipulated.

Q: When and how did your interest in poetry begin?

I’ve read poetry all my life. Reading, books, and visiting the local library were the norm our household growing up. My siblings would churn through books. I was much slower, but I remember my Dad reassuring me that that didn’t signify, it was reading that mattered.My mother used to recite poems by heart to us. And so, I was brought up in an environment where poems were every-day, not some lofty elsewhere. I adored my Granddad. He lived with us after Grandma died. He was a brilliant storyteller and an incredibly kind man. He died he when I was fourteen and was the first dead person I’ve ever seen. I wrote a poem for him as a way to manage my grief. ‘Granddad’ was published in my first collection, unchanged.  As a teenage I discovered that poetry was a safe place to put vulnerable, breakable things. It was a good thing to know. Now, as I write poems for a whole host of disparate reasons, I know that poetry is not always a place of, or for safety. One needs to keep pushing, even if the poem or concept gets broken in the process.

Q: What might you be looking for when judging the competition?

Charles Simic said that a writer ‘who cannot howl will not find his pack’; I believe poetry reaches across and finds the ‘other’, and well done, it articulates the howl, but without exhausting silence. I am looking for poems that possess all of the elements I described above.

BIO: Eleanor Hooker’s fourth poetry collection is forthcoming. Her chapbook Traces is due out this summer from The Salvage Press. She is working on a new poetry project with book artist Ellen Martin-Friel. Her third collection, Of Ochre and Ash, won the Michael Hartnett Award. Her book Where Memory Lies received the Markievicz Award. Eleanor holds a PhD from the University of Limerick and is a helm for Lough Derg RNLI. Website www.eleanorhooker.com

Photograph © George Hooker