杰爾米·胡克（生于1941年）在鄰近南安普頓的Warsash長大，當地的自然風光一直是他一個重要的靈感來源。他的很多詩都寫于威爾士，而他一生的大部分時間也在威爾士度過。為求學他曾去過英格蘭、荷蘭以及美國，目前正擔任格拉摩根大學的英語教授。本身擁有十本詩集的胡克也是著名的批評家，出版過愛德華·托馬斯詩選和里查德·杰弗里文集，并從事大為·瓊斯和約翰·考柏·波伊斯的研究，所有這些都對他自身的創作至關重要。其余關鍵的作品包括《作家們與風景》和《夢幻威爾士》等，其中《威爾士日志》記錄了他七十年代在威爾士中西部的生活。
“I think of poetry as an art of seeing, an art by which, in my blindness, I learn to see.”
Jeremy Hooker (b. 1941) grew up in Warsash near Southampton, and the landscape of this region has remained an important source of inspiration. Many of his poems were written in Wales, where he has lived for long periods of his life. His academic career has taken him to universities in England, the Netherlands and the USA and he is currently Professor of English at the University of Glamorgan. As well as his ten collections of poetry, Hooker is also well-known as a critic and has published selections of writings by Edward Thomas and Richard Jefferies, and studies on David Jones and John Cowper Powys, all of them important to his own creative life. Other critical titles include Writers in a Landscape and Imagining Wales, whilst Welsh Journal records his life in mid-West Wales during the 1970s.
Jeremy Hooker has described his work as "a poetry of place" and this is certainly evident from his Archive recording. However, Hooker's work is never purely descriptive, tussling instead with issues of belonging and the relationship between man and his environment. This interaction is revealed as a complex network of mutual influence: the landscape of the downs seems timeless but the hillock the plover perches on is a burial mound ('Matrix'). Many poems focus on our desire to assign significance to our surroundings, to "lick it into shape" like the Mother bear her cubs in 'That trees are men walking'. From the pre-historic cave painter through to his boyhood self who "tastes words.../from which he will build a world" ('Strawberry Field') the key question seems to be "how to shape a life" ('Arnolds Wood'), but equally his poems ask how a life is shaped. Whilst all this suggests the importance of roots, there are also many images of fluidity and freedom, of water and flight. Connected to this is the haunting recognition that some essential element remains beyond grasping: like the curlew's cry which is "...mine/Not mine" perhaps it's never possible to be fully at home in the world.
These tensions give his poetry a taut resonance. However, whilst his language is finely chiselled, the poems don't conform to traditional structures; their patterns are like the flow of a waterfall "shaping the ways of change" ('That trees are men walking'). His voice, both controlled and fluid, captures this delicately poised music.
His recording was made for The Poetry Archive on 30 August 2005 at the poet's home in South Wales and was produced by Richard Carrington.
Jeremy Hooker's Favourite Poetry Sayings:
"One is trying to make a shape out of the very things of which one is oneself made." - David Jones, Preface to The Anathemata 1952
