Jeremy Hooker (Peter Jeremy Hooker) Biography

British poet and critic, born in Warsash, Hampshire, educated at the University of Southampton. The prevailing concern in Hooker's verse with the interactions of man, place, and history was established in The Elements (1972) and Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant (1974), his first two collections of verse. Solent Shore (1978) explored the personal, familial, and communal significances of his native Hampshire landscape. In Englishman's Road (1980) his absorption in the implications of Welsh culture became apparent. Master of the Leaping Figures (1987) reflects the historical, religious, and mythical dimensions of his experience of Winchester, where he had taught. The fluid free verse Hooker generally employs is highly appropriate to the extended sequences which predominate in his work. A View from the Source: Selected Poems appeared in 1982. His critical works include John Cowper Powys (1973) and John Cowper Powys and David Jones: A Comparative Study (1979); the essays of Poetry of Place (1982) and The Presence of the Past (1987) are thematically centred on the treatments of local elements and ideas of nationality in the work of a range of British and American poets.