Local poet and writer Eleanor Hooker has been confirmed as a winner in the UK’s Poetry Society Member’s Poems competition with her poem ‘Tamponade’.
The competition sets members the task of writing a poem on a theme chosen by a leading poet. Poet and author Carolyn Jess-Cooke judged the competition, with ‘Truth’ as the theme. All of the poems will be published in the Poetry Society’s newsletter this month and are available to read online. This is Eleanor’s second time winning this competition; in the Spring of 2107, her poem ‘By Longing’, on the theme of ‘Dilemma’, was selected by the American poet R.A. Villanueva.
Mark Fiddes is another of the winners of this recent competition. Mark was First Prize Winner in the 2015 Dromineer Literary Festival’s poetry competition, judged by poet Thomas McCarthy, who in 2016, launched both Eleanor and Mark’s new poetry collections at the festival’s Launching Party at Lough Derg Yacht Club.
Last weekend Eleanor was selected to read alongside five other writers at the inaugural Flash Fiction Introductions as part of the Cork International Short Story Festival. The authors selected are currently working on, but have yet to publish a collection of short fiction.
It’s a busy publication time for Eleanor, who has new poems forthcoming in: Winter Papers, an annual anthology for the arts, edited by author Kevin Barry and his wife Olivia Smith, Poetry magazine, based in Chicago and founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, Poetry Ireland Review, Editor Eavan Boland, Banshee, a journal of literature, edited by local writer Eimear Ryan, and writers Claire Hennessy and Laura Jane Cassidy.
Two of Eleanor’s poems have been selected for inclusion in Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing, highlighting contemporary Irish poets, that will include poets Eavan Boland, Thomas McCarthy and Martina Evans. The poems for this issue were requested by editors Helene Cardona and Yuyutsu Sharma. The journal is based in Kathmandu, in Nepal.
Eleanor’s third collection is due for publication in 2020. As well as completing a flash fiction collection, Eleanor is currently working on a new suite of poems on 20C Irish and International womens’ history.